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Play-Building: Creating A Documentary Theatre Performance In A High School Setting, Philip Wieger Van Eyck

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This paper describes a high school theatre program’s project in which Anna Deavere Smith’s documentary theatre work serves as the foundation for play-building for students. Research in theatre arts supports the use of play-building as a way to explore major themes of relevance to students. However, there is little research addressing documentary theatre’s use in a high school setting. Teacher and students created a full-length dramatic play which incorporated interviews of actual people related to the theme; in this case an exploration of dreams, both aspirational and nocturnal, entitled Dreaming: Day and Night. After transcribing the interviews, an edited script …