‘That's who I'd be, if I could sing’: Reflections on a verbatim project with mothers of sexually abused children

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article I consider a charge often levelled against verbatim theatre: that it is essentially appropriative and that it uses the life experiences of vulnerable and marginalized individuals and communities within our society in order to authenticate or invigorate theatre making. By using as a case study, a verbatim theatre project I led involving the charity Mosac and seven mothers of sexually abused children, I examine the process and the relationships that emerged between the verbatim subjects who offered up their stories as part of the project and the actors who played them at a public rehearsed reading of the play. Drawing on psychoanalytic readings of ‘identification’, I challenge the assumption that appropriation always only equates to an eradication of the other by the self. Instead I propose that the enactment of the verbatim subject's story by a professional actor can facilitate a moment of recognition and a positive process of empathetic identification which, if handled carefully, can be beneficial or even therapeutic for the verbatim subjects who offer up their stories in this way.