A while back I came across something on the web that I thought would make a great play. I researched and found there was a documentary about this subject. I never saw it - but eventually wrote the play based on interviews and news articles. Do I have the "rights" to do this? Everything was culled from the articles (names all changed). Are articles in the paper and interviews and articles posted on the internet "fair game" for adaption?
Yep - Docu-theatre is quite an interesting genre, there is a fair bit out there.
My tutor at uni was a specialist in it, he had done a fair few on the local community, adapting excerpts from interviews, newspapers and even his own street interviews and research, etc.
Eric Bentley did well with it from trial transcripts.
There is a play about Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston pedophile trial fame that has done well, with an HBO movie being made of it starring Christopher Plummer and Charles Durning. Which by the way, a new production of "Inherit the Wind" will be produced on Broadway starring those two terrific and powerful actors. (Also based on a real trial and event!)
There is also "The Andersonville Trial," based on the Civil War P.O.W camp.
It is a wide open field. If you find the right story. And know how to edit transcripts for dramatic purposes.
If you find the right public domain story you can have fun by letting your imagination run wild as in "Equus."
Whoever knows where an inspiration may come from. Just, as in the case of Equus, it is imagination from a source, and no real names were used. In the others mentioned, they were real characters using trial or interview transcripts.
By the way, has anyone yhet to see Michael Apted's latest "49 UP" episode of his movie serial every seven years? I am seeing it this week. Great fan of it.
in media res
Last edited on Sun Nov 5th, 2006 01:35 am by in media res
Many thanks for the advice. I do know most of the plays mentioned (or at least about them) and wasn't sure if the internet was the same "Eminent Domain" as a newspaper article.
And how was the movie - heard about it on MPR and of course no where to be found in White Bear Lake, MN? Next stop: Netflix.
Will do. I shall wield the membership away from teenagers. Wrote down the director (listen to radio in car and when interested - can never write anything down). SOmetimes I chant a name I want to look up all the way home so I will remember.
Ahh, HAMLET - should find the original thread. Yes - I saw Hamlet. Yes, indeed. And there are always blessings - it was two hours fifteen minutes long with two ten-minute intermissions. In some ways the three-and-a-half HAMLET with the actor (well-known) play Hamlet whining (at Joe Papp's Shakespeare in the Park - yeah, did I ever date myself) was worse.
Of course I was surrounded by young teens during the intermissions asking me, "What's this about? What happened?" And I had two ten-minute intermissions to tell them. That's where THE COMPLEAT WORKS comes in handy.
I believe Peter Shaffer based the original plot on an allegedly true story about a young man who blinded a stable of horses. The play focuses more on the aftermath, the "why" of such violence.
