Verbatim Style in Parramatta Girls Olivia Clare 12th Grade

Verbatim theatre can be best defined as “true people’s stories… something that’s at the heart of the community… a piece of theatre out of that by interviewing people that are touched the most”, as Eliza Logan describes it, and Alana Valentine’s Parramatta Girls distinctly reflects this. Drawn from a dark period in Australia’s history, the careful construction of the verbatim, assisted through choice of dialogue as well as inclusion of dramatic action, the play manages to present the authentic, if painful legacy, of this particular period.

Due to the verbatim nature of Parramatta Girls, dialogue must be chosen extremely carefully. It is for this reason that Valentine constructed the play through her unique form, massaging the dialogue, and I found that doing this with my own Verbatim script that I had to write for school was of significant help. Within my script, I included a narrator, with whom I could be creative and who could tie the dialogue together, as well as the storyline and action. This difficulty for Valentine extended to the problem in exhibiting the reality of the horrors that the incarcerated women faced without desensitising her audience, stating of her major creative challenge, “I think just not making it a...