Ep 30: Arianna Gayle Stucki – A verbatim drama, people’s stories of loss as they want them told

<p>The first of two conversations via zoom. It’s with Arianna Gayle Stucki in the USA, in discussion on how the verbatim drama &quot;Memorial&quot; came to be. </p><p>We&#39;ve talked about how stories get told; who tells them; and how that telling may take the story away from the one it belongs to. This is different.</p><p>In June 2019 Arianna came to NZ to listen to people who had suffered loss and great hurt in the mosque attacks; not to seek a story but to listen to people who wanted to tell their stories. Trust had to be earned and hours of words recorded and transcribed. </p><p>Long listening and weaving together, and full collaboration, has led to a play “Memorial” – a verbatim drama crafted directly from these words. It has already spoken to other people’s experiences of loss: a family who lost their son to suicide; members of a community in Buffalo, New York who experienced a racist shooting and, further afield, to students in Beirut, Lebanon with their experience of earthquakes. </p><p>The hope is to bring it to New Zealand. In this podcast Arianna speaks to the process of how this work came about. In the next episode we&#39;ll introduce Arianna&#39;s co-creator, Adam Elsayigh and the two of them will talk more about the process of its development.</p>