The archive does not become public just because it is quoted.
Documentary theatre is powerful because documents are not inert on stage. A bureaucratic phrase can become chilling when spoken aloud. A repeated denial can become a rhythm. A witness statement can stop being a line in a file and become a body addressing other bodies. Performance gives public records social temperature.
That temperature is also the danger. A transcript has gaps, procedures, coercions, and power relations inside it. An interview has conditions under which it was given. A public record may be accurate and still incomplete. If the performance smooths those conditions away, the audience receives a clean drama instead of a public problem.
The stage must therefore carry the edit visibly. It should help the audience know when language is verbatim, when testimony has been compressed, when characters are composite, when documents are in conflict, and when the production is asking them to sit with uncertainty rather than resolve it.
