Working: Documentary Theater From Interviews to Final Production

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4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host Isaac Butler talks to documentary theater makers Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, whose plays include The Exonerated, about the criminal justice system, and Coal Country, about the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia. Blank and Jensen explain how documentary theater works, from interviews with subjects to a live performance where actors perform interview excerpts verbatim. After the interview, Isaac and co-host June Thomas discuss why documentary theater is such a great way to communicate important information to an audience. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. And if you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. It’s only $35 for the first year, and you can get a free two-week trial now at slate.com/workingplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever thought, ugh, this water is too wet?
0:04.0	Or this beach is too sandy.
0:06.0	My name's Christine.
0:08.0	And my name is Sandy.
0:09.0	And we're the host of Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet.
0:11.0	A podcast where we do dramatic readings of the most wild and off-the-wall
0:14.7	reviews on the internet.
0:15.7	We find the funniest real reviews about everything from Vegas
0:19.5	weddings, matchmaking services and Trader Joe's to caves toddler beds and Spirit
0:24.5	Halloween. You won't believe the things that people think absolutely must be
0:28.1	said on the internet. How else would everyone know that some caves don't have
0:31.1	Wi-Fi? We hear about the good, the bad, and that one time
0:34.0	time Spirit Halloween sent someone a dildo instead of a Halloween
0:37.0	costume and believe it or not we got to the bottom of it.
0:39.8	Join us every Wednesday wherever you listen to your podcast.
0:43.4	Beach she Sandy Water Toet is brought to you by the Forever Dog Podcast Network.
0:47.0	Whenever we embark on a new documentary play, we're looking for subject matter that gets at issues that we believe are really important for us to be grappling with as a nation
1:06.4	where the conversation often gets polarized right or stuck in this kind of binary framing.
1:16.0	That's a place where we can start a conversation
1:18.9	that could unite folks that would ordinarily
1:21.1	think they would totally disagree with each other.
1:23.0	Welcome to Working.
	...

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