SOURCE: Nunn, Robert C. “Performing Fact: Canadian Documentary Theatre.” Canadian Literature, no. 103 (winter 1984): 51-62.

In the following excerpt, Nunn examines the documentary genre in Canadian theater and illustrates the importance of audience inclusion in Pollock's The Komagata Maru Incident.

Documentary theatre is a creation of our century: its history begins with Erwin Piscator's production of In Spite of Everything in 1925.¹ Many reasons have been advanced for its development: it is a response to a deeply-felt need to penetrate to the truth hidden in the massive accumulation of facts;² it is an adaptation of the rhythm and tempo of theatre to a sensibility created by the mass media, especially film;³ it is designed to dispel “the artificial fog behind which the world's rulers hide their manipulations.”⁴ It is indeed, like its close cousin, epic theatre, theatre for the scientific age,⁵ and like it, foregoes the traditional emphasis of dramatic...