Tribunal Theatre
The Prominence of
the Document
The main promise is to provide
access or connection to reality
through the facticity of documents,
but not without creative mediation.
Reinelt, Janelle, 2009. p.23
The Rise of Richard Norton-Taylor
Norton-Taylor, primarily a political
journalist for The Guardian has found
his niche within the tribunal sector.
Collaborating with Artistic director Nicholas Kent,
he has condensed and edited numerous inquiry
transcriptions.
One play that exceeded all expectations of this genre, ‘The Colour of Justice’, was
based solely on trial transcriptions sourced from the public inquiry into the harrowing
murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
The trial lasted a total of 69 days and produced over 11,000 pages of documentation,
in which Norton-Taylor had the substantial task of distilling the document to create
a 200 page play-text.
The single source covered weeks of inquest and several
thousand pages of transcript; the final product lasted for
just over two hours of stage time
Paget, Derek, 1990. p.16
The Fall of the Metropolitan Police
Key concepts highlight within the
play-text:
The Pursuit for Stephen’s killers
The fight for Justice
The portrayed corruption of the
Metropolitan Police force
The edited transcripts from the Macpherson inquiry,
included in my play The Colour of Justice, show how
witnesses damned themselves, leading Macpherson to
conclude that the police investigation was ‘marred by a
combination of professional incompetence,
institutional racism and a failure of leadership
by senior officers.
Norton-Taylor, 2012. p.1
Source Documentation – The Legal
Transcript
The term transcript refers to the reproduction of
a written record.
In legal senses, you could have a duplicate of any
transcribed court hearing, which comes in the form
of a lawful transcript.
The legal transcription becomes the original source of
material when producing tribunal theatre.
This material becomes the catalyst in creating a
theatricalised recreation of the inquiry.
Tribunal writers claim to stay faithful to the transcript
in terms of the written document and the
chronological court proceedings.
My point is that by dramatising the inquiry transcripts it allows
the main details of a protracted story to be drawn together
and the crux of the political agendas to be laid forth.
Norton-Taylor, 2008. p.209
Norton-Taylor:
Editor or playwright?
The position of an editor in relation to any material
is that of an indistinct concept.
Connotations of the word edit suggest that an editor’s
role is to merely cut and re-arrange the source material.
With regards to tribunal theatre, it is generally within the
editor’s authority to assemble the material to allow for the
best possible interpretation.
The writer of verbatim drama is often referred to as an
editor as opposed to a playwright, as they are not seen to
be writing nor creating the material, but to dramatically
edit to create a performative representation.
The fact that the people in his plays actually exist and the
words in his plays were actually spoken in no way alters his
role as a dramatist.
Hare, David, 2008. p.10
Selective Editing…
Thursday 26th March 1998,
Evidence of Sergeant Clement.
A. Yes.
Q. Is that Inspector Groves?
A. Inspector Groves, yes.
Q. We will hear from him tomorrow, and half a dozen constables?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. I will not for a moment seek to identify precisely who they were. You were called
to the scene of what we know now to be Stephen Lawrence’s murder?
Q. Roughly how many of you would there be and of what rank?
A. Possibly an inspector, sergeant and six Pcs on each vehicle.
Q. You let your voice drop occasionally. I do not think we picked that up?
Q. There would be one inspector, three sergeants and 21 PCS- this is the
Commissioners reserve and it would be shared equally.
Q. So far as we are concerned on the night in question, you were on this
particular carrier…correct?
A. Yes that is correct.
Q. Was the Inspector with you that night?
Authenticity of the Document
Notions of truth and accuracy become the subject of
careful debate.
Dramatic interpretation or factual representation.
How authentically credible does the play-text need to be in
order to stay faithful to the document?
Selective editing.
How difficult is it to create a fair and balanced
representation?
The concepts of reliability and accuracy refers to the
trustworthiness of a record as a statement of fact.
Lee, Brent, 2005. p.1