Dramaturgy

This is a tricky one, because nobody can agree what a dramaturg is. But I’m pretty sure I am one.

If you want me to do research for you, that’s something I can do, and if you want me to go over a piece of writing with a close eye to meaning, that’s something I can do well, but what I do best is something to do with structure. How a piece speaks to itself – not so much what it means, but how its meanings sit with each other; the parts close to the centre or centres, the parts that throw things out to the edges. The places where it is like a storm, or ground after rain.

This may sound a little vague and metaphorical, but that’s because I’m getting overexcited. In practise, my approach is quite rigourous. I use diagrams a lot, mapping out possible structures of meaning graphically. These may well be simple and open ended for a piece in its infancy, or complex and multiple for a more mature work. Sometimes it’s just about discussion.

I don’t do this to prescribe to anyone how a piece of work should be, of course. It’s largely about helping to articulate things about the work, often things you might already have known to some degree or on some level. I think this articulation is helpful for lightly polishing up a piece of work, or making big changes in how it fits together.

I have worked as a dramaturg on most of Emergency Chorus’s work, as well as projects during my MA. This means I have some experience with work that incorporates text and also dance. Most all of my experience is with devised work, where I think this approach is particularly effective, but I see it as absolutely working with single-writer work, too.

I am particularly interested on working as a dramaturg on projects that take concepts from maths and science as part of their subject matter. I think these things are hard to treat rigourously in art, but as a theatremaking maths grad, the idea of doing so excites me a lot.

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I have some big silly theories with made up terminology about how this all works, which I began setting out at the end of my MA. They’re not really important for doing dramaturgy in practise, but I do like them.