Developing the Critical Verbatim Theater Artist during the Pandemic: A Transatlantic Collaboration

Abstract

Following recent social upheavals and an unprecedented pandemic, the development of theater students to work with stories from the community has become more urgent. Because verbatim theater brings to focus real voices and often involves sensitive topics, artists/educators consider key ethical questions before their engagement with educational or community contexts. Artists/educators are developed within the fieldwork of applied theater, during their study at university, through supervision to engage communities. The pandemic made such fieldwork difficult due to online learning and teaching, so university educators tested alternative ways of simulating the experience of working with participants. This article analyzes the rationale, application and evaluation of an educational verbatim theater case study that involved British theater students and American nursing students, from the University of Chichester and Kent State University respectively. It identifies how international collaborations might offer an alternative environment to fieldwork by inviting students to consider key ethical questions before their engagement with communities. The narrative of practice reveals how it was rooted in Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. The artist/educator’s reflection highlights how such collaborations invite students to explore dialectics and the ethics of representation in verbatim theater, and to develop accountability and empathy when working with participants, which hopefully, they bring to their future fieldwork.