In the last few years, North American authors like Anna Deavere Smith, Erik Jensen, and Jessica Blank have given a new impulse to the Documentary Theatre genre. Initiated by Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) and theorized by Peter Weiss (1916-1982), it has found one of its best contemporary exponents in playwright Emily Mann. As a dramatic writer, and also as an artistic director, Mann repeatedly poses one question to her audiences: what to do with what we know. Theatre, for her, has three main functions: entertainment, education, and inspiration. In her original scripts, her adaptations, and her productions, she respects this principle and makes a conscious effort to build a community around the stages she works on, most frequently …
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Citation: Fernandez-Morales, Marta. "Emily Mann". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5735, accessed 31 October 2024.]