From the Center for Research into Expanded Dramaturgies

Performance Research: On Dramaturgy

February 3rd, 2010 3:04 pm

Performance Research, Vol 14, No 3 is dedicated to Dramaturgy, with contributions from Karoline Gritzner, Heike Roms, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi, Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Bruce Barton, Peter Eckersall, Fujii Shintaro, Takayama Akira, Hayashi Tatsuki, Duška Radosavljevic, Valentina Valentini, Dragan Klaic, Tim Etchells, Bojana Kunst, Phil Smith, Christian Biet, Katia Arfara, Christel Stalpaert, Martina Lenhardt, Esther Pilkington and Daniel Ladnar and further ’statements’ from others.
As you can tell from the list above, the issue is bulging at the seams and full of rich pickings. It won’t clarify what dramaturgy is – or rather, the dizzying number of implicit and explicit suggestions of what dramaturgy is or might be (let alone the dramaturg and setting aside divison into inter/actual dramaturgy, reception dramaturgy, embodied dramaturgy and so on) become something it seems best to enjoy, to find usefully provocative, rather than to resist. Here are a few, to whet your appetite:
Dramaturgy is or might be:
- above all a constant movement. Inside and outside. The readiness to dive into the work, and to withdraw from it again and again, inside, outside, trampling the leaves. A constant movement. (Van Kerkhoven)
- a systematic way to navigate the multiple, competing logics (dramatic, postdramatic, relational and performative) at work in a performance… (Barton)
- a matter of sequence and managed revelation across time. (Etchells)
- a conceptual deterritorialization, resulting from an encounter with a new bodily space (Stalpaert)
- nothing more (and nothing less) than putting things into order (Lenhardt)
- a method of uncovering the past and…a way of connecting the performance world with the everyday (Eckersall et al)
- an expanding field of tasks and skills, challenges and strategies (Gritzner, Primavesi and Roms)
- facing a challenge (Lehmann and Primavesi)
- tricky (Barton)

Dramaturgy Promotional Video

Check this out! Molly's a better spokesperson for us than I am.

-Doc

Dramaturges: The Multitaskers

Sorry for the sudden spamming. I found another short article from "Goethe-Institut" on dramaturgs, their multiple uses in the theatre, and also some interesting summaries of dramaturgical work done to enhance German productions throughout the last sixty years or so. Some of it is review, but I did find the specific stories, such as of the dramaturgy done with "Rechlitz" and "Gertrud," to be interesting because it expanded my notion of what a dramaturg could do in specific productions. Also, some of the German "turges" mentioned here might be useful to do further research on.

-Mike

Rehearsal, Performance, Dramaturgy – Bernd Stegemann about the Craft of Drama

Here's a short interview with Bernd Stegemann, former dramaturg for the Deutsche Theater in Berlin, who is currently Professor for Theater History and Dramaturgy at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts and head dramaturg at the Berlin Schaubühne.
I especially liked his opinion of the dramaturg's role during rehearsals. It is a strong opinion, yet I think also a justified one. I liked his general "acting suggestions" section and how a dramaturg reads a play on two levels to gain better insight on how to approach dramatizing characters and working with the actors who play them.

-Mike

The Results of a Racially Aware Nickelodeon

Children will be outraged when they learn that only black penguins are allowed in the zoo.

CBS Super Bowl Women's Rights Fail

(Cross-posted on Straight Up Jank)
 
Read this story from The Nation about an anti-choice ad set to run during the Super Bowl. In it, some big football guy's mother talks about how her doctor recommended she abort her fetus, but she's glad she CHOSE to continue her pregnancy because the fetus eventually turned into a big football guy. 

While it's easy to see how this spot breaks new and unwelcome ground for the big game, the (more troubling) fact is that in many ways, the Tebow/Focus on the Family ad is just a new expression of a longstanding Super Bowl tradition in which women are valued only in direct relation to their usefulness to male athletes and fans. (emphasis mine)

The article puts the most recent Super Bowl Women's Rights Fail in the context of general football women's rights fails- the shitty representations of women in the commercials (either young sexually available hottie or shrewey bitch keeping you down) and the exclusive "boy's club" attitude of the games that oftentimes leads to violence against women who try to participate- as players, fans, and media.

Though women make up almost 40% of the Super Bowl's viewership, the ads seem to target men exclusively. So now women aren't only being sold as sex objects or obstacles standing between men and Dudely Bliss, but now we're also "hero incubators."

In light of new research revealing that about a third of women who report partner violence also report that their partners try to pressure them into pregnancy and motherhood (as do 15 percent of women who had never reported relationship violence), this male-targeted argument is particularly chilling. (emphasis mine)

So, yeah, feminists are pissed.

We're not afraid of engaging with the ad's content. The argument is not a super strong one against abortion- Hitler, Stalin, and Osama bin Laden all had mothers who chose life too. A baby born right now has a much higher statistical likelihood of being a rapist or murderer than any kind of famous person. Feminists do not have a hard time shooting that one down. Other, more on-the-surface reasons why the ad is really freakin' offensive:

1. Focus on the Family, one of the most right wing (and anti woman) organizations in the country, paid $3 million for it to be shown. An organization like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro Choice America, or the National Network of Abortion Funds would use $3 million to help women. I'm just sayin'.

2. CBS denies "controversial" ads all the time. They've denied ads from MoveOn.org, PeTA, and the United Church of Christ in the past, and just denied adspace for a gay men's dating website that would have aired during the upcoming Super Bowl. "Controversial" = liberal, apparently.

Not cool, CBS.

(Lots of info taken from this post by Jill on Feministe)

Gaga

@Kendra Lee, fellow Ghost Light Forum-ers, & Lady Gaga fans:

Attached is a link to make-up artist Michelle Phan's tutorial on how to recreate Lady Gaga's wide-eyed girl in her "Bad Romance" music video.

It's amazing.

Enjoy :]

-cmr

Welcome to Ghost Light

Welcome to the new online clearinghouse for the Ghost Light collective. Any member of the collective, present or past, is welcome to post. Anybody who is registered with google or OpenID can comment on the posts. I encourage visitors and authors to use this site to do the following:

• Communicate with the rest of the collective by posting comments, queries, observations, anecdotes, discoveries, cries for attention, and information relevant to your production work, as you will. I will censor only for relevance to the collective's work, and to maintain a respectful attitude towards our fellows. Criticisms (of what theatre you are following, of what you are reading, of our nation's performance culture, of theory and history in general, and even of the program itself!) are always welcome!
• Share the site address with your casts and crews - post links to your packets and dossiers.
• Use the RSS feeds which link to a number of sites of interest to us, and suggest new ones.
• Recruit people you know who might be interested in joining the program. 

I hope you enjoy and get good use out of this, and let me know how we can improve it as we go!

-Doc