Testimony

Abstract

The political and social climate of war and terror generates an almost spiritual need for what is, perhaps optimistically, called ‘the truth’ and it seems as if the theatre, with its tradition of claiming to offer both katharsis and the truth, might satisfy this need. But ‘the truth’ is harder to define than it appears. There is a juxtaposition of the ‘aesthetic’ versus the ‘authentic’ concept of truth to be observed here: the ‘aesthetic’ claims to provide insight by means of verisimilitude and cathartic effect, whereas the ‘authentic’ holds a claim to objectivity. ‘Authenticity is one of those words that can do no wrong’, Jan Lloyd Jones teases, ‘[i]t is a word that always manages to be on the side of the angels’ (Lloyd Jones and Lamb 2010: xiv). ‘Authenticity’ distances itself from anything artificial and fictional; as a concept, it could, if one wanted to par with Lloyd Jones, be regarded as the patron saint of documentary drama.