How can theater be used to share the words and stories of real people?

When I wrote this question a little more than a month ago I knew I wanted to focus on studying documentary theater. I also knew that I wanted my question to be more open ended than singling out that genre. However I did not yet know why this was.

This last week I have spent a lot of my time reading about documentary theater and its various forms past and present. What I have learned is that the term itself is debated. Some artists full heartedly embrace the term but others find it limiting. However, regardless of what they call their work this type of theater is unified by a search for humanness. One of the plays I read expressed this in its intro by contrasting humanization and romanticization. Prior to this week I did not have the words to understand this however I subconsciously knew that I was drawn to: the goal of understanding “real people” rather than the creation of possibly more romantic or fantastical stories. At its core regardless of the name “documentary theater” is a call to audiences to listen to the voices of others. I think this is incredibly powerful and feel that to varying degrees the shows I have read are successful at this. However, I do not yet know how to create this power purposefully in my own work.

Probably the most important part of this is that I don’t yet know how to move between journalistic and creative work. The first part of the documentary theater process is almost universally accepted to be investigatory and research based. How do I transition from that process to thinking articitally about the words and stories I have gathered?