I always thought I wanted to be an actor. I was entranced by the idea of being a storyteller. I wanted to be an actor because I thought the storyteller provided such value to a production. But I soon discovered that directors, designers, stage managers, crew members, and so many other people involved in a show provide their own unique value to a production. In high school, I remember being cast in shows but I never felt I truly understood a script’s meaning. Post-production I always felt that we never did the play one hundred percent justice or gave the show a fair opportunity to reach its full potential. A sense of disappointment consumed me and I despised the feeling knowing that we had only scratched the surface of the play. I regretted never having enough time to not only do research on my character but the play itself. Ultimately, I wanted to provide value and meaning to a production. I wanted to understand the whys and what ifs. I wanted to investigate the wheres and hows. I wanted to examine and explore the text of a play.
Despite the limited amount of time we had for rehearsal and the lacking research, I felt in our high school productions, any extra time I had I was committed to finding ways to create more valuable engagement with the play’s text. One day, as I walked into our gloomy theatre lobby, the idea hit me! I decided to devote myself to creating lobby displays for as many productions as possible. If there was one thing I was sure about in high school was that I believed theatregoing should be an eventful experience made up of various components. I believed it was essential that audience members encounter the world of a play as soon as they enter the lobby. And looking back now, my production displays have come a long way since the high school ones made up of dress rehearsal photos and construction paper; however, a lobby display’s relevance is just as necessary now as it was back then.
I vividly remember when I got the call that I had been accepted into the Dramaturgy Department. I received the call during my study hall period but I ignored the unfamiliar number. I asked my teacher if I could briefly step out of the room to return the call in case it was in reference to my Webster Conservatory status. I briefly spoke with Gad Guterman and then ran to tell my theatre teacher the news. After I got past the excitement of telling people, I thought to myself, “What exactly is Dramaturgy? What have I signed myself up for?” At that point in my life, I understood dramaturgy as someone who does research for a play and completes a lobby display, but I was thrilled about the opportunity to learn more.
Two and a half years pass and my knowledge of theatre and dramaturgy grew immensely. During this time period, I was going home every holiday and family members were asking me what a dramaturg is and my go to answer consisted of, “A dramaturg is a production researcher who has a hundred different titles and a hundred different jobs.” Although I had served as an assistant dramaturg for one show and was in the early stages of dramaturgy work for my second show, I felt that my contributions I offered to a production were disregarded and as a result my confidence was lacking in my dramaturgical work. On the first day of class, I recall Gad Guterman reading a passage aloud and asking us what we thought this passage was saying about a dramaturg’s role. I jumped to conclusions and raised my hand saying, “Well they’re a researcher.” I then struggled to justify my claim and realized how my definition of dramaturgy was imprecise and too ambiguous.
As the semester progressed, our class discussions and bi-weekly articles about dramaturgy strengthened my understanding of dramaturgy, made me realize the various opportunities in the field, and above all I learned that there is no model dramaturg. There is not a criteria list where the number of checked boxes makes you the ideal dramaturg. Reading diverse articles about dramaturgy has obviously been a great exercise for me to learn how professionals engage with dramaturgy in their career, but it has also given me an opportunity to question what I personally believe is dramaturgy in its most significant form. Mayson Ali, professor and chair of the Theatre Studies Department at the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts in Syria, stated, “Having a dramaturg will connect all the missing dots…” (Skeiker 78). I agree with Professor Ali about the dramaturg’s responsibility to make sense of what’s unclear in a play’s script, but I think it’s worth noting that too often a dramaturg is put on such a high pedestal to have some magical power that makes a play mysteriously come together just by having them in the room. Working on a play like Mr. Burns where the play is set in a post-apocalyptic society and includes significant time jumps, the uncertainty was overwhelming at times. What I came to realize is that a dramaturg is not responsible for having to know all the answers but that they should know how to successfully research and provide evidence that will support their statements to a director. This realization got so much pressure off my chest and altered my views on how quick dramaturgs should have to supply answers.
In the global news, we constantly see horrifying hate crimes, issues of prejudice, and the never-ending struggle for people to find a way to live in peace with one another. In Robyn Quick’s article “The Dramaturgical Process and Global Understanding” she quotes U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, “It is possible – not very probable, but possible –that people can find in themselves, through intercultural education, the ways and means of living together in peace” (Quick 158). More and more the results of dramaturgical research are assisting in building bridges between audiences that would not normally interact with one another. During my dramaturgical work for Yellow Face, I gained so much insight on the yellow peril and discrimination against the Chinese American community that stems back over a hundred years ago. I continue to discover how my dramaturgical work has allowed me to understand and empathize with cultures different from my own and until people take an active engagement in learning about others we will continue to face issues of discrimination. Essentially, dramaturgy is becoming an outlet for understanding cultural diversity.
One of my favorite articles I read this semester was Katie Rasor’s article, “Dramaturg as Public Relations Manager.” In the short article she discusses the successful creation of the Hilton Head Island New Play Festival in South Carolina. It was vitally important that a dramaturg provided a strong cultural understanding of the festival’s target audience (Rasor 483). South Carolina has the highest concentration of Christians in the nation, 75.2% of the state’s population identify as Christian, which is 23.8% above the national average (Rasor 482). The state’s military and veteran presence exceeds all other states: 11.5% of South Carolina citizens are veterans while the national average is only 9.6% and 1% of South Carolina citizens are employed by the Armed Forces, which is twice as much as the national average (Rasor 482). The production team had to take into consideration the significant Christian and military presence in the South Carolina community. As a result, the audience affected what plays would be featured in the festival and what lines were not to be crossed in order to not drastically offend such a large group of people. Just two years after the start of the recession, beginning a new play festival on a resort island for a regional Southern audience came with many risks. However, this festival came with benefits for both the theatre artists and audience members, Rasor said, “by inviting new groups to join the national conversation about American drama, we develop and cultivate, not just the pieces, but the audiences as well” (Rasor 483). This is just one more example that allowed for interconnected relations between different groups of people.
Fast forwarding to April 2016, I was preparing for the opening of Mr. Burns. A common misconception about dramaturgy is that all they do is sit in a library, do research, and don’t actually make things but instead provide information to others. Dramaturg Anne Cattaneo writes in her article “Leadership Advice to Dramaturgy Students” that dramaturgs are creators and collaborators as much as the other production members, “Ours is a creative profession – one that requires as much creativity as acting, directing, and design” (Cattaneo 242). I really took this idea to heart and wanted to create a unique lobby display that was different from past displays. I decided to do an art installation piece in the theatre lobby that showcased a post-apocalyptic world. Along with the help of many volunteers, we created an entire space of missing person signs covering every inch of the wall's white space. Covering such a large amount of space and generating enough posters was a daunting task, but I wanted to ensure that each poster had meaning and significance. I asked volunteers to create missing person posters by describing someone they knew, include their first name, but then write someone else’s last name on the flyer to confuse audience members. I wanted to create a sense of false hope that so many people in a post-apocalyptic world would confront on a regular basis. The inspiration from this decision comes from a heart-wrenching moment of the show when the character Jenny thinks another survivor knows the friend she’s looking for, but it’s just someone with the same name. A dramaturg is a theatrical engager and this lobby display was a piece of my own personal work that I thought truly expressed this vital component of dramaturgy.
A production with active or passive theatre engagement makes the theatre going experience have more depth and substance, allowing for audience members to interact with the play on a deeper level. Evaluating our Shakespearean project I observed how dramaturgy as an educational engager has confirmed my belief that one of the most essential components of dramaturgy is creative community engagement. Dramaturg Magna Romanska writes in the “Introduction” of The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy about the relevance of theatre accessibility and that it is rightfully the dramaturg’s responsibility to expand the audience experience in creative ways, "As more and more dramaturgs across the globe engage in online digiturgy, the future of dramaturgical outreach lies in mobile and context-driven search and networking technology. Dramaturgs should embrace these tools, as they can help the field to grow and further develop while expanding audience experience and making theatre more accessible and interconnected" (Romanska 13).
Even though our #ShakeUpTheVote2016 election was only a short 2 week long project, something as simple as getting people to vote in a mock social media Shakespearean presidential election left an impact on people. This is not me making an assumption, this is me simply viewing the statistics that the campaign reached 3,090 people on Facebook, 469 people engaged with the campaign through posts, shares, likes, comments, or votes, people in 45 countries were reached in 18 different languages, and 168 people voted in the general election. This project was easily accessible on Facebook and connected people around the world on a relatable topic such as presidential elections, during an election season that has taken the world by storm.
There is a whole list of things I have learned from dramaturgy, but one thing I will always remember is that the word “just” is in no way associated with dramaturgy. When you’re a dramaturgy, you’re not just a researcher, you’re not just a lobby decorator, you’re not just a mediator for post show discussions, you’re not just a marketer for social media, and you’re not just a designer for promo videos. There are so many hats that the dramaturg wears and I will continue to wear them in my career. So now we arrive back to this idea of “What is dramaturgy?” right now at this point in my life. Although my definition of dramaturgy will continue to develop and change as I enter the workforce, for right now Magna Romanska’s explanation of a dramaturg is possibly my new favorite, “…the dramaturg is also the ultimate globalist: inter-cultural mediator, information and research manager, media context analyst, interdisciplinary negotiator, social media strategist” (Romanska 14). Dramaturgs have to be a globalist. They have to have an interest in learning about anything in the entire world, depending on what a research a play calls for. A globalist must have a global diverse perspective and a willingness to take on all the roles that Romanska mentions. This semester has confirmed my belief that the dramaturg must seek to find interconnectedness. The dramaturg must engage.
