Miriam Weiner was the guest dramaturg this week. She works
as Literary Associate at Vineyard Theatre, and also as a freelance director.
This inspired a lot of discussion about the overlap between directors and
dramaturgs.
Plenty of directors bring strong dramaturgical skills to
their work, whether or not they self-identify as dramaturgs. Many of those who
seem most appreciative of dramaturgs, I’ve found, are in fact very
dramaturgically minded themselves.
I’m eager to invite into this project all of the best
dramaturgs I know, whether or not that’s the title they’re listed by on their
websites or in programs, because I want to talk about the process and role of
dramaturgy in collaboration, as broadly as possible.
We talked about negotiating post-show conversations with a
project’s artists, the sort that happen informally, one-on-one, as people are
milling around afterward. One of the writers present this week was completely
new to theater, and said she wasn’t even sure what questions to ask about what
to do next with her script. Another writer recently began playwriting, and
talked about being eager for honest critique and disappointed that all he gets
after his shows are general positive remarks.
I feel that there is a karmic power to speaking up when you
genuinely liked someone’s work. The pre-condition for this is, of course,
showing up to see things. I don’t think any of us ever isn’t in the mood to
hear that someone understood and appreciated and was affected by something we
said or made, and so we owe it to each other to be effusive in our praise when
we have it. And doing it for the generosity of it makes it more likely,
ironically, for us to find genuine mutual connection with other artists, and
maybe eventually find some benefit for ourselves.
If you can tell your story to other theatermakers you admire
(and I credit Miriam with articulating this beautifully)—where you’re coming
from, what you’re looking for, what you’re hoping to learn and achieve—they can
choose to get on board for your journey, and maybe help it along. Their current
position or title—producer, intern, performer, stage manager— is sort of
irrelevant, because those things are so fluid, and if they become part of your
tribe, they will be talking about you to their entire networks of collaborators.
An actor who passionately wants a part in your play can be as strong an
advocate for you as an agent.
We also talked about approaching the situation of speaking
with artists about work you didn’t care for. Jason Robert Brown wrote
something about this that helped me, which I didn’t think to bring up in
the session. It’s an essay worth reading, but what I took away was that it wasn’t
ever necessary for me to make my dislike or even my ambivalence about someone’s
work known to them, in the moments after they’ve shared it with me or when they
are still in the process of sharing it with others (i.e., in the middle of a
run). It is necessary for me to be supportive.
That may mean a little bit of lying, or getting better at finding positive
things to say, or ducking out and sending an e-mail if I can’t muster up the
positivity face-to-face. If someone wants real feedback—as one of the writers
at this week’s session said he did—I think it’s necessary to create a space
that’s safe for both the artist and the person giving the critique. Because the
discomfort can go both ways here—it’s not necessarily a pleasant thing to be
surprised with a request after a show that you attended either for pleasure or
to support someone, for an immediate, articulate, and detailed response to it. Some
writers include their e-mail addresses in their program bios, so audience
members can share thoughts. Some might choose to ask a friend out to lunch.
-- Miriam talked about Vineyard’s decision to stop allowing
open submissions. One takeaway from this: if a writer really feels like the
Vineyard, or most any company, is the right theater for their project, if they’re passionately
excited about seeing their work there, ways exist for the writer to start a
conversation, that are perhaps more effective and personal and direct than the
open submission process. There is no prescribed path for this (i.e., there’s no
page on the website indicating a policy for it), but it’s possible to do.
Seeing their work and following up afterward is a good start, for local
writers; sending an e-mail that tells your story and shares what you admire and
asks for a little bit of someone’s time to guide you through the theater’s
selection process is another way to approach it.
***
So, an e-mail exchange from a few weeks ago—related to this
project—has been on my mind, and because it came up in conversation at this
week’s session, I feel it’s worth writing about here.
I was asked by some of the artists attending this week, why
I started this project, and also given some suggestions about spreading the
word, since these artists appreciated what it had provided them, and thought
others would be interested.
I have reached out to a number of organizations that are
playwright- or new play-oriented, about including this project in their event
or resource listings, and many have done so, or been generous enough to feature
the project in other ways. One of the organizations I contacted is the
Dramatists Guild; among their (according to their website) over 6000 members, I
figured there would be some interested in talking with folks who critique/support/champion
new work, and who are often in the position of recommending/evaluating plays
and could provide information about that process and how to navigate it.
I e-mailed a senior staff member of the organization, at the
suggestion of a Guild member who visited the open office hours in its first week. That staff
member declined to include information in their online listings, which would
have allowed the information to be seen by writers based in New York and across
the country.
This is fine. Word is spreading. I am not owed the publicity
for this project by any individual or organization.
But I was surprised and saddened by the reasoning behind
this decision, and brought this up around the table at this week’s session. I
was told that the Guild couldn’t support the project because “the role of the
dramaturg in American new play development is quite heated and potentially
volatile.”
I didn’t get (nor ask for) permission to share the e-mail,
so I don’t want to reprint it in full, although there isn’t anything
titillating to withhold. The tone was friendly; I was wished luck with the
project, and told that if a Dramatists Guild member wanted to post about it in
the Members-only bulletin, they could do so. But this open office hour
project—basically, just a weekly conversation opportunity—was not something
that I, as a non-member (and non-dramatist) could share with their members,
through their channels.
My e-mailed reply:
Thanks
for the response, for sharing that link, and for your good wishes with the
project. And, yes, I understand that artistic collaborations among
theatermakers, both across disciplines and within a discipline, can become
volatile. I'd actually be really grateful to have playwrights who are wary of
dramaturgs, come to the open office hours and talk about that.
If
you're interested, at some point, in brainstorming positive ways to facilitate
playwrights and dramaturgs interacting (through DG, or otherwise), I'd love to
do that. Or if you'd like to talk about ways of making submission and
script selection processes more transparent and easier to navigate for DG
members, I'd be happy to do that as well, because so many of the writers I talk
with seem frustrated and overwhelmed by it, and I find that even a brief
conversation with someone from the so-called "gatekeeper" side can be
of some use, and that is part of what I'm hoping to provide with this project.
I didn’t hear back.
The one instance that I am aware of involving any serious
volatility around dramaturgical contribution is the Rent lawsuit. (You can read about it here
and, more extensively, here.)
It’s difficult to know whether that dispute would have reached the heights it did
had it not been for the unfortunate death of Rent author Jonathan Larson prior to the show’s official opening,
leaving the conversation about the dramaturg’s contribution to happen without the
writer. But regardless, that case is related to a show that opened in 1996, and
it was resolved in 2001—thirteen years ago. I’m not suggesting that there has
been no volatility in dramaturgical collaboration since then, but aren’t all
relationships “potentially volatile”? This isn’t inherent to dramatist/dramaturg
interaction. The Dramatists Guild organizes a Director/Dramatist Exchange (information
here) and there
have certainly been directors who have mishandled writers and their work. (On
the other hand: directors, I’d like to repeat, are also often dramaturgs.) I’m
curious why those relationships are fostered, but not any with dramaturgs.
The Guild website indicates no facilitated opportunities for
fostering relationships with dramaturgs; the only instances of the word “dramaturgy”
appearing on their website are in regard to protecting dramatists’ ownership
of their work—the language here is respectful, certainly, and dramaturgs are
not singled out, but rather included along with all other artistic
collaborators. You can see Google’s search results for “dramaturgy” on the
Guild website here.
A search for “director” (see here) gets many similar results pertaining to protecting
dramatists’ work, but also evidence of discussions fostered by the Guild
between directors and dramatists.
I’m not a dramatist, so I have no idea how well they serve the
people they intend to serve. Nor am I in a position to expect them to do
anything that serves me. The stance taken in the e-mail I received is not
“personal” to the extent that I am not the only dramaturg at whom it is
targeted. But to be part of an entire field of people ignored by this
organization because what we do is “potentially volatile” does feel personal.
(Also, silly.) I don’t know any way to collaborate without the potential for
volatility. And I wouldn’t want to collaborate without that potential.
This e-mail suggests to me that the craft I practice is in
fact so harmful to the artists whose work I am dedicated to holding up, that
they have to be protected from me.
And when I acknowledged that there is clearly a gap between
my perception of what I do and the Dramatists Guild’s, and suggested we try to
bridge that gap, there didn’t seem to be interest in doing so.
As I write this, part of me is groaning, thinking: stop
writing this and get back to dramaturging. Innocent girls in Nigeria are still
missing, and I’m feeling slighted by someone not promoting my pet project? Try
caring about something bigger than this. I’m spending too much time in coffee
shops with writers on their projects and not enough time making things or doing
things or just being with non-theater people. Who cares about “the process”?
But this has been gnawing at me for a few weeks, and I
started this project in the hope that it would provoke me to further explore
the role of dramaturgs in theater. I look for my theater work to allow me to
make deep, enriching connections with other human beings. By not inviting (or
in this case, facilitating a way for) dramaturgs to at least engage in conversation (I’m not
suggesting endorsement…just conversation) with their members about the field of
dramaturgy, Dramatists Guild seems to be ignoring the capacity of dramaturgical
discussion to enrich a project or process. But also ignoring the fact that there
are smart, hard-working, generous people looking to work alongside dramatists (and
doing so, anyway, whether the Guild engages with the dramaturgy field or not) and
not snatch their babies, and that we are worth a glance.
For a lot of theater artists, what dramaturgs do is a
mystery. If that is the case, it follows that they likely don’t know what
dramaturgy is. This doesn’t mean they don’t know how to do dramaturgy or aren’t
having dramaturgical discussions; every project has its own dramaturgy—the
structure it takes, the rules it sets up to define its world, the real and
imagined histories it suggests, its context within the community where it is
being made and shared—regardless of whether people are calling it that. It’s
like blocking—whether or not you’re discussing it, if there are performers
appearing somewhere in the theater space, there is blocking; it’s not a concept
one can choose to utilize, it’s an element of the work. And being aware of its
power means being able to harness it.
If Dramatists Guild was interested, ways could be found to,
say, pair up young dramaturgs with young writers, to support each other, and
practice their craft and grow into their careers together. Literary managers
and other institutionally-based dramaturgs could brainstorm with writers about
improvements to the submission processes that satisfy nobody. There could even
be dramaturgs available as a resource to writers who are currently working with
other dramaturgs and running into an issue they want some advice about.
Dramaturgs could listen to dramatists talk about what sort of support they are
or aren’t looking for on their projects or in their careers, and discuss ways
to provide that.
I don’t need the Dramatists Guild to spread the word about
this project. And Dramatists Guild members don’t need this project, or even dramaturgs,
to make their plays. But I think it’s unfortunate that an institution with the
power to promote conversation is choosing to stay out of it. That seems to be something different from avoiding the potential for volatility—that’s avoiding potential, or, really, just plain avoiding.
Take care,
Jeremy
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