Dramaturgical Philosophy
When I’m at a party and people ask me what I do, I almost always tell them I’m a poet to see if they will get bored and move on. But if they don’t, I tell them I am also a dramaturg, and they inevitably ask me what that job entails, to which I respond that my primary duties involve getting drunk with writers. But I’m only half joking! As a dramaturg I am a story expert, a doula for the artistic creators, someone who isn’t doing the thing, but will be right at your side while you do the thing, helping to guide your journey.
There are lots of kinds of dramaturgs and different definitions of the word dramaturg in the western theater world. Some dramaturgs do historical research for writers and directors, then deliver packets of material for actors and design teams to refer to as the play gets made. Although I can do research, I am not primarily a research dramaturg. I’m a new play development dramaturg, which is to say that I focus on talking to artists about story, plot, action, character and language – helping to reflect back to them what I see in their work and assisting them in trying to make the work closer to what they intend it to be. An analogy I often is that working with me is like going on a road trip. You set the destination and the drive the car. I’m riding shotgun. So let's say that you tell me that we are driving to Montana – I jump in and off we go. You are driving, but I have googlemaps out, and I’ve been on quite a few road trips. So eventually I might comment to you “Hey, I know you said we are going to Montana, but I’ve noticed that this road looks like it’s actually traveling to Colorado. Which is fine – I hear that Denver is great in the summer, big mountains just the same as Montana, though Montana is much less densely populated, better coffee shops also, which I know cause I’ve been to Montana many times. So if you want to go to Montana, we are going to need to switch roads at some point to head further north.” My job is to read, reflect, and help give artists the tools they need to get where they are going.
The ways I work with writers is through notes sessions, readings, workshops and in rehearsal dramaturgical guidance. There’s lots of methodologies and dramaturgical concepts I use when working with writers, directors, designers and collaborative theater artists – but no matter how we sort through a problem, a foundational tool of dramaturgy is relationships. Because who am I? I’m a person with an opinion about your work – and in your career you will run into quite a lot of people with opinions about your work. There isn’t a piece of paper you could find that says I'm smart or that my advice is the right advice – and if that paper did exist, I would recommend being quite suspect of it. Why should you listen to me? You should listen to me because of the relationship we have built. You should listen to me because you know me – you know that I love science fiction (more Star Trek than Star Wars), you know that I study religions in my free time, that I love to go dancing, that I cultivate friends who hold opinions that are far to the left of my own, and that I'm an insomniac. Because the source matters – and you should know the source of opinions that come your way.
I cultivate relationships with artists by learning how to speak to them in their own specific and individual language. By learning a person’s language, I can give the note that will make its way into the center of your thoughts and have the greatest positive impact on your work. This is related to another value I have, which is “do no harm”. If I don’t think I can help you make your piece better, I will tell you that you shouldn’t be working with me. But if I can help, I will. This philosophy of going where I am needed and then speaking to a person in a way they can understand, has guided me over the last 15 years and it has never let me down.