The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy

Magda Romanska, Magda Romanska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135122881
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Dramaturgy, in its many forms, is a fundamental and indispensable element of contemporary theatre. In its earliest definition, the word itself means a comprehensive theory of "play making." Although it initially grew out of theatre, contemporary dramaturgy has made enormous advances in recent years, and it now permeates all kinds of narrative forms and structures: from opera to performance art; from dance and multimedia to filmmaking and robotics.

In our global, mediated context of multinational group collaborations that dissolve traditional divisions of roles as well as unbend previously intransigent rules of time and space, the dramaturg is also the ultimate globalist: intercultural mediator, information and research manager, media content analyst, interdisciplinary negotiator, social media strategist.

This collection focuses on contemporary dramaturgical practice, bringing together contributions not only from academics but also from prominent working dramaturgs. The inclusion of both means a strong level of engagement with current issues in dramaturgy, from the impact of social media to the ongoing centrality of interdisciplinary and intermedial processes.

The contributions survey the field through eight main lenses:

• 
  
  

• world dramaturgy and global perspective

• 
  
  

• dramaturgy as function, verb and skill

• 
  
  

• dramaturgical leadership and season planning

• 
  
  

• production dramaturgy in translation

• 
  
  

• adaptation and new play development

• 
  
  

• interdisciplinary dramaturgy

• 
  
  

• play analysis in postdramatic and new media dramaturgy

• 
  
  

• social media and audience outreach.

Magda Romanska is Visiting Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy at Emerson College, and Dramaturg for Boston Lyric Opera. Her books include The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (2012), Boguslaw Schaeffer: An Anthology (2012), and Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2014).

Part I

WORLD DRAMATURGY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

1

Robert Blacker looks at the past and future of American dramaturgy

Jacob Gallagher-Ross and Robert Blacker

Dramaturgy in America was a European ideal grafted onto native aspirations. Arising in the 1970s, it became widely disseminated as a job description and a set of emerging ideas in the 1980s, as a new generation of artistic directors took over regional theatres. This piece attempts to indicate macrohistory by relating anecdotal microhistory, revealing snapshots of the evolution of American dramaturgy. In a series of interviews conducted over the winter and spring of 2013, Robert Blacker and I discussed the role of the dramaturg in a trio of theatrical institutions that represent three kinds of theatre organizations – regional, developmental, and classical. We talked about where the profession has been, and where it’s going, as the founding generation prepares to retire and new cultural and financial constraints produce new definitions of the role. The following is excerpted from Blacker’s remarks.

Jacob Gallagher-Ross

On the La Jolla Playhouse

In only our second season La Jolla was nominated for a Tony for Best Regional Theatre. La Jolla emerged so quickly in prominence on the national scene because of the caliber of the artists that its artistic director, Des McAnuff, and I were able to bring there. Artists are always the foundation of good work. I had worked as dramaturg with Des on two of his productions for Joe Papp in New York, and he invited me to join him at La Jolla as institutional dramaturg and later associate artistic director (different title, same function). We planned seasons together, and I admired his willingness to take the best idea in the room and bring in directors as good as he because he was secure in his talents. Insecurity is the death of collaboration.

We worked from personal connections, and Peter Sellars, Robert Woodruff, Bill Irwin, Stephen Sondheim, and James Lapine were a critical part of our early seasons. We also took advantage of an historical moment. A talented group of young directors who were soon to become artistic directors at theatres across the country were still available: Mark Lamos, Emily Mann, and Peter Sellars, among them, as well as Garland Wright, who withdrew from La Jolla when he got the Guthrie. Suddenly, in the 1980s, a new generation of artistic directors inherited the American theatre from its not-for-profit founders. It was a seismic shift that moved the energy away from a handful of urban centers, where these young directors developed their ideas, to theatres across the country.

Most of these directors had worked in small theatres, and Des saw the importance of giving them the opportunity to mount productions on our Broadway-sized mainstage, often letting them choose plays and projects such as rarely produced Brecht and Sophocles that normally would not be done on this large a scale. I learned when I worked for Joe Papp that it’s as important to provide opportunities for an artist to develop their skills as focusing on the project at hand. That’s how you create an exciting theatre scene.

A larger stage often meant for these directors the opportunity to tackle large cast classics that they could not afford to do in smaller theatres. We put together seasons in a fashion that was very important for Des McAnuff. He hated when an artistic director asked: “Do you want to do Pygmalion?” “Why would Pygmalion be the classical play out of all the classical plays I want to do,” he told me. “Ask me what I want to do.” So we worked off of lists of plays from our directors, making sure that our seasons still offered variety. Our productions were successful because they were driven by passion that these directors brought to projects that came from their gut.

There was another reason as well. The most important artistic function of the artistic leadership of a theatre, after choosing artists and projects, is to guide productions, as they need it. Des and I were very good about helping to shape material and productions. Seeing run-throughs in the rehearsal room. Attending dress rehearsals. Continuing to give notes during previews. Des has the eye of a director and is amazing with detail. For example, he is constantly scanning the stage so he can remove anything that throws the focus. My strength was complementary – in the area of text, particularly with clarity and meaning, and using structure to achieve both. That’s what a dramaturg can do. But there is no need for rigid guidelines for any of this. Des is also the best dramaturg I know because as a playwright himself he understands a writer’s process. As collaborators you bring your own strengths to the table and that will change with each collaboration. The ability to guide productions makes the difference between a good theatre and a great theatre and surprisingly is often lacking.

Of course, work on a new project starts before rehearsals begin with conversations and readings, and sometimes a workshop – the focus of my work for Sundance.

On the Sundance Theatre Labs

I was invited to Sundance to restructure its annual Playwrights’ Lab, which was then a two-week plus summer event at the Sundance resort in the Utah mountains. I was artistic director for eight years, and each year I made a number of changes in collaboration with Philip Himberg, the director of the Sundance Theatre Programs.

First, I proposed changing the name. Because the theatre that I found interesting was generated in multiple ways – by playwrights, by directors, sometimes through the collaboration of a group, sometimes by solo artists – I wanted to honor every way that theatre work is generated. And I wanted to bring in projects that ran the full range of American theatre, from the avant-garde to traditional musicals. So I suggested changing the name to the Sundance Theatre Lab. Playwrights were understandably concerned that their access to the lab was more limited and protested. More on that later.

Another change I implemented for our first season was based on my experience attending the annual O’Neill Playwrights Conference. The admirable success of their workshops turned the conference into a marketplace for artistic directors and others to shop for product. I was concerned that the pressure to be at your best when an important producer attended a presentation of your play would curtail the freedom of artists to explore and experiment. And so the Sundance Theatre Lab became a private affair. The artists loved it. The only audiences for presentations at the end was the community of artists and staff who were working there. With one exception. If you were already committed to producing a project at the lab, you needed to see it in its latest state to help move it forward thereafter. Those visitors, however, were only allowed to see their project.

Feedback sessions in front of an audience, the surest way to shut down a writer, also became private and limited to a handful of participants. We tried not to hold them immediately after a presentation when artists were still digesting what they had seen. I began then by asking what the creators learned from watching their work and then continued by requesting questions that they wanted us to answer. We moved on to our own questions and comments thereafter.

If I felt a young project was not ready for a presentation and the writer agreed, we did not do one. If a writer was timid about presenting something I thought would benefit from the presence of an audience, I would ask artists to consider doing so. The secret to the success of any workshop where the projects are at different stages of development is to give them the individual treatment that they need and deserve.

Changes continued through seven out of my eight years there and were based on our observations and feedback from the artists. One of the most important was implemented for our second year. Rehearsing every day, writers had little time to rewrite, sometimes putting in all-nighters to turn in rewrites based on what they had seen the day before. This seemed unproductive to me, and so for our second season we lengthened the lab to three full weeks and cut down rehearsals to every other day, so that the writers would have a full day in between to write – and to think. One of the most important things that any artist needs is think-time. At Sundance they could take a long walk on the incredible mountain that towers over the resort. In that solitude, an important idea may come to you. Well, the artists agreed, and the Sundance Institute was extraordinarily generous in giving us more money to expand the length of our residency there.

I brought in dramaturgs on two levels: those who worked on a pair of projects and would be present at those rehearsals; in addition, I brought in two mentors, who helped me visit rehearsals, occasionally giving feedback, but also to help Philip and me track how projects were doing. This also gave them the opportunity to get to know artists and projects before they became part of the feedback sessions at the end. For mentors, I often chose artistic directors I knew who were good at giving notes. For the first season I invited Des McAnuff and Emily Mann. Later I included playwrights who were also teachers, such as Marsha Norman.

The people who attended the final critique sessions were the writer, director, and dramaturg who were working on the project, the two mentors, the dramaturgs who were working on other projects, in addition to me and Philip. I made it clear that it was perfectly fine to make limited observations. I think it’s a trap to think that you always must have something to say. Not everyone understands or is sympathetic to every project. Sometimes the best thing you can offer is keep your mouth shut. I would lead the sessions and we’d try to keep them, as much as possible, as a dialogue. This kind of session is always very sensitive, and when a writer showed signs of fatigue, I would bring it to an end if I had not already done so. The stage the project was at was also an important consideration. If you try to get a writer to cerebrate about a project that is in the earliest stages, they may articulate something which should not yet be verbalized. Once you verbalize something, you’re beginning to freeze what the piece is.

After three seasons, we expanded the Sundance theatre programs. We created a writing retreat for playwrights, in part to help address the criticism that the Theatre Lab had cut down on opportunities for writers. (On average, six of our eight projects at the lab still had a playwright at the center). Philip found an arts colony on a cattle ranch in Wyoming – in February – run by the amazing Ucross Foundation. Only we theatre folk were crazy enough to go to Wyoming in the winter. We usually brought seven playwrights and a composer there each year.

I learned the value of the austere beauty of the Wyoming plateau and the lab in the majestic Utah mountains for our urban-bound art. We usually make theatre in cities, but these rural retreats offered the opportunity to reflect on the immensity of the world and to ponder something outside of yourself. And that informed the breadth and depth of the work. The format at Ucross was simple. You were there to write. You didn’t need to show anyone what you were working on, but ad hoc private conversations took place. Solitude until dinner. (Lunches were even brought to our work rooms). Conversation and community over the dinner table. There were always two events at the lab and the retreat, the project you were working on and community among the artists who were there. Conversations about the art; practical exchanges about the commerce. Friendships formed, lasting and fleeting. Watching the artists gathered at these events, it began to feel as if there really was an American theatre in this vast country where we seldom meet. It was ironic that this occurred at a ski resort and a cattle ranch thanks to the visionaries who brought our visionaries there.

On the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada

Going to Stratford was intimidating because its amazing acting company included actors who had been there for twenty to thirty years, and whose knowledge about Shakespeare made my eighteen productions seem a flirtation. It was a great opportunity to learn more about my favorite writer. In my early career, Joe Papp showed me the importance of changing your focus regularly, so you don’t go stale. Having worked in New York, regional and developmental theatre, the classics were next.

Stratford’s first two artistic directors, Tyrone Guthrie and Michael Langham, were pioneers, stro...