Verbatim theatre seems to be a very effective way of conveying a message and having an impact on an audience. Perhaps this is because the script is made up of the words of real individuals as opposed to a script writer who is only imagining what it is like to be in the situation of the characters in the play. This creates a more hard hitting message and the fact that the speech is more natural sounding with inflection and stutters makes for a very relatable piece of theatre. This style of theatre seems to be influencing other play writes and creatives in the industry. An example of this is the play 'Lungs' by Duncan Mcmillan. The play is written in the same way verbatim is, in the sense of it being very natural to listen to. The dialogue in this play is written with stutters and unfinished sentences, which makes it feel like you're almost listening into someone's conversation for 2 hours. There is something really refreshing about theatre which is written like this; it's easier to relate to and much more believable than something written in perfect sentences because one rarely talks completely fluently in day to day life.
DV8's work seems to have toned down slightly from when they were first established in the 90s. This could be due to the fact that 'In Ya Face theatre' was more apparent at this time so theatre was in general more shocking than it is in the present day. DV8 are now starting to perform in the West End which may also be a reason for their performances to be less shocking, to suit a modern audience. In my opinion, the shocking trend will soon come back around as Sarah Kane's play Cleansed has recently proved successful at the National Theatre in London, which is a play including very intense themes.
As for verbatim theatre, I think that it is currently growing in popularity and will become much more established in the future. I have been seeing more and more verbatim performances in the industry, for example John at the national theatre which I had the pleasure of seeing a year back.
