Reviewed by:

• Dana H by Lucas Hnath, and: Is This a Room by Tina Satter
• Barbara Fuchs

In a piece written early in the Trump era, Rob Weinert-Kendt argued that documentary theatre should not be constrained by its commitment to the real or prevented from rendering “a truer reflection than a mere document might.” But what if the “merely” documentary actually complicates our understanding of how narrative is constructed and relayed? What if “reflection” fails to capture the complexity of what must be conveyed? These are some of the questions powerfully raised by Is This a Room, constructed entirely out of the transcript of an FBI interrogation, and Dana H., collated from interviews with the playwright’s mother. The Vineyard Theatre’s juxtaposition of the two pieces at the Lyceum on Broadway in October and November 2021 provided the opportunity to consider how verbatim theatre, as a particular subset of the documentary, complicates our conceptions of theatrical authenticity and verisimilitude. Although the pieces were not presented as a double bill, their conjunction posed rich questions about what truth and reality might mean on the documentary stage.

Is This a Room, created and directed by Tina Satter, with the extraordinary Emily Davis in the lead, was first presented at The Kitchen in January 2019 and moved to Broadway in October 2021. The piece reenacts the FBI interrogation on June 3, 2017 of intelligence [End Page 383] contractor Reality Winner (yes, her actual name). Winner, who was subsequently convicted of espionage and served five years in prison for leaking proof of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, was “visited” at her home in Augusta, Georgia, by three agents. As the program notes, “Is This a Room stages this visit word for word from the official transcript recorded that day.”

Becca Blackwell, Will Cobbs, Pete Simpson, and Emily Davis in the 2021 Broadway production of Is This a Room. (Photo: Chad Batka.)

The play gives no sense of Winner’s eventual fate, yet the audience is well-aware of it. While we might share in the disorientation of the protagonist as the aggression ebbs and flows and the conversation distracts, we inevitably bring our knowledge of the aftermath to what becomes a chronicle of an arrest foretold. Rather than concern ourselves with the resolution, we are thus thrown back onto the process: How can this series of inane exchanges add up to such a serious outcome? Where exactly, in this bewildering conversation, does power lie? Winner shares with the men who come for her a background in compliance: she fully perceives the violence that remains implicit and therefore offers little overt defiance. Yet the tension in the theatre, sustained by the strong design of the minimalist production, was almost unbearable. Where the FBI had redacted bits of sensitive information, the lights blinked pink; when more substantial censorship was at work, the lights faded ominously to black in effective lighting design by Thomas Dunn. The light and sound design (the latter by Lee Kinney and Sanae Yamada) felt especially significant as they gestured to what lay ahead.

Beyond these sound and lighting cues, Is This a Room explored how verbatim transcription obscures even as it reveals. From Winner’s visible discomfort and isolation, to her almost plaintive refrain of concern for her pets, to the awkwardness of chit-chat amid a terrifying search, Room confronted the audience with the mismatch between official records and lived experience. Much was left between the lines, expressed in the dissonance between what we saw and heard and what we knew was going on. For the most part our eyes could not be trusted: how could the slight presence of Davis, in her Converse high-tops and shorts, convey her moral courage? What to make of the avuncular Pete Simpson, who played the good cop Agent Garrick without ever breaking character? The unspoken menace of the gender imbalance in the scene was...

审核人：

• Lucas Hnath 的Dana H和：这是Tina Satter的房间吗
• 芭芭拉·福克斯

在特朗普时代早期写的一篇文章中，罗布·韦纳特-肯特认为，纪录片剧院不应受到其对真实事物的承诺的限制，或阻止其呈现“比单纯​​的文件更真实的反映”。但是，如果“仅仅是”纪录片实际上使我们对叙事是如何构建和传递的理解复杂化了呢？如果“反思”未能捕捉到必须传达的复杂性怎么办？这些是Is This a Room强烈提出的一些问题，完全由 FBI 审讯的笔录和Dana H.，从对剧作家母亲的采访中整理而来。葡萄园剧院于 2021 年 10 月和 2021 年 11 月在百老汇的 Lyceum 将两件作品并置提供了机会，让我们有机会考虑逐字剧场作为纪录片的一个特定子集，如何使我们对戏剧真实性和逼真度的概念复杂化。尽管这些作品没有以双重法案的形式呈现，但它们的结合提出了关于真相和现实在纪录片舞台上可能意味着什么的丰富问题。

Is This a Room由 Tina Satter 创作和导演，由非凡的 Emily Davis 领衔，于 2019 年 1 月在 The Kitchen 首次亮相，并于 2021 年 10 月搬到百老汇。该作品重演了 2017 年 6 月 3 日 FBI 的审讯情报[完第 383 页]承包商 Reality Winner（是的，她的真名）。温纳后来因泄露俄罗斯干预 2016 年美国总统大选的证据而被判间谍罪并入狱五年，她在乔治亚州奥古斯塔的家中被三名特工“探访”。正如节目所指出的，“这是一个房间从当天记录的官方成绩单中逐字逐句地安排这次访问。”

Becca Blackwell、Will Cobbs、Pete Simpson 和 Emily Davis 在 2021 年百老汇制作的Is This a Room中。（照片：乍得巴特卡。）

这部剧没有说明温纳最终的命运，但观众却心知肚明。虽然我们可能会随着攻击性的消退和谈话的分心而分享主角的迷失方向，但我们不可避免地会将我们对后果的了解带到预言中的逮捕编年史中。与其关心解决方案，我们因此被退回到过程中：这一系列无意义的交流怎么会导致如此严重的结果？在这场令人眼花缭乱的谈话中，权力究竟在哪里？温纳与来找她的男人们分享了顺从的背景：她完全理解仍然隐含的暴力，因此很少公开反抗。然而，由极简主义作品的强大设计所维持的剧院紧张局势几乎无法忍受。联邦调查局编辑了一些敏感信息的地方，灯闪烁着粉红色；当更严格的审查制度在起作用时，在 Thomas Dunn 的有效照明设计中，灯光不祥地变黑了。灯光和声音设计（后者由 Lee Kinney 和 Sanae Yamada 设计）在他们指向前方时感觉特别重要。

Beyond these sound and lighting cues, Is This a Room explored how verbatim transcription obscures even as it reveals. From Winner’s visible discomfort and isolation, to her almost plaintive refrain of concern for her pets, to the awkwardness of chit-chat amid a terrifying search, Room confronted the audience with the mismatch between official records and lived experience. Much was left between the lines, expressed in the dissonance between what we saw and heard and what we knew was going on. For the most part our eyes could not be trusted: how could the slight presence of Davis, in her Converse high-tops and shorts, convey her moral courage? What to make of the avuncular Pete Simpson, who played the good cop Agent Garrick without ever breaking character? The unspoken menace of the gender imbalance in the scene was...