Verbatim Theatre and Memory Work in Eastern Europe

The article from artpress (July-August 2016) traces the development of documentary theatre in Russia following the Verbatim movement that emerged in 1970s England. The Royal Court Theatre of London organized workshops in Moscow after perestroika, which spurred the growth of documentary theatre in the region. The piece examines how verbatim techniques—using tape recorders to capture ordinary people's speech—were adapted to address collective memory and historical trauma in post-Soviet states. It discusses specific productions and their methods of working with testimony, emphasizing the political and therapeutic dimensions of staging real-life narratives.