Fictional Documentary
—–Interactions Between Real Life and Real-life-based Theatre
In her analysis in the article, Bodies of Evidence, Carol Martin describes that “contemporary documentary theatre represents a struggle to shape and remember the most transitory history—the complex ways in which men and women think about the events that shape the landscapes of their lives. ”
Documentary theatre, as its name implies, distinguishes itself from all other forms of theatre works by its strong connection with real life. Since the premiere of the Laramie Project, reproducing real life archives such as interviews and videos has become the mainstream impression about documentary theater among its audience.
However, in the documentary theatre, COLUMBINUS, co-written by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli, writers adapted a controversial yet revolutionary manner to bring its audience back to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Columbinus takes the form of documentary theatre to rise discussions in its audiences on the adolescent. This play is based on real archives. However, the actors and actress perform in a typically fictional manner instead of acting as if they were real people in the real life.
In the first act, the writer used plenty of symbolism. For example, every student in the play has a name and several objects that represent his or her personalities. Moreover, all these students are labels themselves that reflect the faces of American high school students, and the interactions among them reveal many symbolic scenes that exist in the real high schools. However, later in the second act, every element of this play has changed. In the direction before the first scene of act two, PJ Paparelli commented that act two is of “no air of pretense or affection” (86), but a sense of reality and genuineness, letting its audience know that the play is going to reproduce real life events. No more symbolism is presented, and the massacre is happening.
The contrast between the two acts leads us to the question of why PJ and Karam made the play in this way. However, when I tried to look into this contrast, I only found limited information directly from the theatre makers. As PJ dismissed the United States Theatre Project after making its first but also the last play Columbinus, the direct source of insights about this play is missed. Fortunately, after the first production of Columbinus in New York, theatre makers and companies across the U.S. reproduced the play in multiple areas. In the following part, I will use comparison between PJ Paparelli and Karam’s and other artists’ productions of Columbinus to address the previous question.
According to the script, the first act is intended to be a general reflection of American high school lives. In a review of this play on New York Times, Charles Isherwood comments that “The interaction among the types presented here will probably accord cleanly with the memories of anyone who attended a suburban American high school in the last few decades.” The behaviors of characters, the conversations happened among them, and the set up of scenes are “accurate as these snapshots of the daily cruelties and occasional mercies of high school life certainly are, (but) they are also familiar and sometimes banal.” In my perspective, although some audience who look for more backgrounds or analysis about the massacre will probably get disappointed, the first act reached a success by recalling up people’s memories on their own high school lives. The absence of some “real” turns the play into a broader background, rising wide resonance among its audience.
After four years of its debut, another production of this play was directed by Alex Tobey for Necessary Dialogues Theatre Co., in Raleigh. Despite of all its side effect of fictionalization, no matter who remake this play, and no matter how much different directors change the settings in the play, the way of representing the Columbine High School life in the first act remains the same. According to Tobey, “ Columbinus takes an uncensored look at the lives of real high school students, and contains strong language and mature situations”. (http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/2010/08/columbinus-aug-12-15/) Even though I did not go and see the play myself, the repetition of the first act in different productions proved the success of it.
Furthermore, besides the function of the “air of pretense or affection”(86) in act 1, we should also take a look at its influence on the whole play. As I mentioned, the play made a sudden turn in the tone at the end of act 1. A sudden transit from symbolism to realism creates a sense of abruptness, and that abruptness is exactly what PJ wants to present on stage, because it rises a question, “why did these familiar high school experiences lead to such monstrous tragedy?” This question is where the discussion begins.
In Charles Isherwood‘s opinion, the first act offers “a diagnostic aid in understanding the roots of the monstrous events depicted in the second act”. The contrast and connection between the two acts mirrored the similar relations between American High School lives and the tragedy in Columbine. Thus, this transaction is the crux of this play, which brings us into a discussion based not only on the Columbine horror, but also our own understanding of high school experiences. Even though PJ Paparelli did not offer us any analysis in the play, partly because the massacre in Columbine had been already widely discussed and analyzed by media, like Charles Isherwood commented, we can still easily draw the conclusion that “the toxic combo of social dysfunction and psychological frailty in American high schools was at the root of their(the two murderers) pathology”, by the way he constructed the play. Carol Martin said, in her Bodies of Evidence, that “a text can be fictional yet true”. COLUMBINUS is a true answer told in a fictional tone to a real life question on our youth.
The play ended its off-Broadway performance in 2006, and PJ Paparelli, along with the United States Theatre Project he created, did not bring about any further productions of this play. The United States Theatre Project faded away after its first but also the last production. However, the theatre itself continues to survive. In the following years, this play is produced by Necessary Dialogues Theatre Co., Stray Cat Theatre, etc. In the former production, both the casts and the director were high school young boys and girls, instead of adults professionals. In the later one, Stray Cat Theatre located its main audience source to be university students nearby. Columbinus becomes a start point of a long discussion of both American high schools and the mental world of the youth. Although we could not travel back through time to prevent the tragedy, we felt grateful “for its not happening, somewhere in America, seven times a week.”(Review the Off-Broadway Production of COLUMBINUS for THE VILLAGE VOICE, Michael Feingold).
The play is just a beginning of the discussion on the big picture of the society, in which such event as that described in Columbinus could happen. It directed the aftermath of this event to a positive influence on the society, but high school and college shooting still exist in this country. Like Carol Martin said, “documentary theatre is an imperfect answer that needs our obsessive analytical attention.” A single documentary theatre is far from enough to answer all the questions that perplex our youth nowadays, and more attention and analysis are necessary to fully understand the cause behind those shootings that happened to our youth. But it is undoubtedly a good start, for it triggers discussion among its audience.
COLUMBINUS, By the United States Theater Project. Text by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli.
“Columbinus”: Exploring the Evil That Roams a High School’s Halls, By Charles Isherwood, http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/theater/reviews/23colu.html.
COLUMBINUS | Aug 12-15, by Robert W. McDowell, http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/2010/08/columbinus-aug-12-15/
Bodies of Evidence, Carol Martin.