The Thin Line Between a Fact and a Story

The Thin Line Between a Fact and a Story

 By Cheyenne Kemp of the Forum

Where do you draw the line with the truth? Suppose a family member passed away suddenly, would it be appropriate to put the names of the children they may have abandoned in their obituary just because it is part of the truth? Most people stick to the facts that paint the deceased in a positive are flattering light…even if some of the truth has been omitted. What about someone who committed suicide by jumping off of a tall building? Does it matter if it took the victim’s body exactly 8 or 9 seconds to fall 150 feet to the concrete below? The correct answer may not exist which gives you the basis of the play, The Lifespan of a Fact. The play was presented by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis from November 5-10 at the Loretta Hilton Theater.

   (l to r) Brian Slaten as John D’Agata, Perri Gaffney as Emily Penrose, Griffin Osborne as Jim Fingal

 photo credits:  Phillip Hamer courtesy of The RepSTL

This play is based on the actual seven-year long argument between celebrated author Joe D’Agata (Brian Slaten) and Jim Fingal (Griffin Osborne) when Joe’s essay is rejected from its original commissioner, Harper’s Magazine, then sent to Emily Penrose’s (Perri Gaffney) magazine The Believer because of factual inaccuracies. As an intern, Jim was given the seemingly easy task of fact checking Joe D’Agata’s essay concerning the suicide of a teenager at a Las Vegas resort in 2002 but ended up finding so many more errors that intervention is needed to complete the task before the deadline of Monday morning. Some of the errors included switching locations of where a hot sauce bottle was found because the name of the business it was in didn’t sound pleasing. Another example is the changing the number of casinos in Las Vegas from 31 to 34 because the sound of thirty-four was more pleasing to Joe’s ear, but not accurate.

Throughout the play, D’Agata admits that his piece is an essay and not an article. In any case, D’Agata changed the name of the suicide victim and changed the way another suicide victim took their life. The other victim took her like by jumping off a building like the original victim and changed it to death by hanging because he wanted there to only be one case of suicide by jumping from that week. D’Agata also changed the location of where an attack happened from exactly it happened to around the location based on what an observer disclosed without conducting a formal interview.

There is no way to prove what the observer said was true. When people read credible magazines, they expect to be given the truth mixed with an interesting story to go along with it. How do you make the truth interesting without embellishing what happened in someone’s life? The debate over if the reader is more interested in a story or the truth has been debated against for years by D’Agata and Fingal but still is a question we must all answer in order to receive the right information in an intriguing way.

For more information on The Rep’s theatre season go to www.repstl.org.