This week’s blog features
thoughts from the office hour facilitators in each of the project’s three
cities. You can find updates about the project here and on our Facebook page
(facebook.com/opendramaturgy); the conversation continues on Twitter at
#opendramaturgy.
NYC — Jeremy Stoller
A man from the technology
sector who is creating a solo performance piece, wanted to talk about its
future—how to go about finding collaborators (a director and/or dramaturg), and
how to mount the show. Should he devote resources to submitting the work to venues
that can choose to produce or present his show? Or put it up himself, and either
take on all producing duties or hire others to help him?
Guest dramaturg Alex
Barron and I shared some suggestions, including:
--attending other solo
festivals and performances, to see what work seems well-directed or well-produced,
and reaching out to the artists responsible.
--applying for solo
festivals; while continuing to show up for the open mic, spoken word, and storytelling
opportunities he’s been attending, and getting the piece out into the world for
people to see—finding an audience, and honing the work itself; exploring what
self-producing or bringing on some producing partners would look like;
e-mailing the venues he thinks might be a good fit to see how he might get his
work considered. Pursuing multiple avenues simultaneously feels like a stronger
choice than pursuing any of these options individually.
We talked about the
flexibility that was afforded to him in the show being its own one-man band;
while at the moment the entire responsibility for the show is his, he also has
the ability to put it up with more ease than a playwright writing a play for an
ensemble cast. And we encouraged him to take advantage of this, to the extent
that it could help his show.
A director/deviser stopped
by, and talked about her positive experiences with dramaturgs—a conversation
I’m always happy to have; the difference in the way dramaturgy is approached/deployed
in Europe vs. the U.S; and some challenges/questions she’s facing with a
devised piece she’s developing.
She talked about the free
flow of ideas that exists between her and her dramaturgs when the collaboration
is working well, and how much she has relied on them to support and build on
her vision. They become an integral part of her creative team, there less to
provide simply research and context, but to reflect back to her the ideas she
is offering, and to refract them through their own understanding.
We questioned why this
sort of relationship isn’t more common in American theatermaking, and could
only guess that it had something to do with the processes we’ve established,
and some with an attitude of ownership over work that looks different
elsewhere.
The conversations with
these two artists—one less experienced in the performing arts, one who has
devoted her career to them—as well as with Alex in the downtime between them,
were fun and inspiring and thought-provoking, and made me glad to have this
project back on my schedule.
PHILADELPHIA – Amy Freeman
Going into it, I had no
idea what to expect. A few people emailed to say they would stop by. But,
email's so fickle, it's easy to back out. I was joined that day by Heather
Helinksy, a freelance dramaturg whose dramaturgical accomplishments are almost
too numerous to list - she's worked with American Repertory Theatre, The
Kennedy Center, The Lark, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and Woolly
Mammoth, among many others.
Heather and I hadn't seen
each other in while, so we used that first hour or so, while waiting for
people, to catch up on what we were doing and talk about the project a bit. I
expressed a bit of nervousness about having no one show, she told me a
playwright she knew would be arriving at 6.
Then, our first visitor
arrived. A playwright looking for guidance about what to do next with his play.
It was a historical drama that he had begun writing years ago and that had had
a reading in 2011. The play was very long and at the time, he was hesitant to
cut it or to consider splitting in it into two pieces. He then had another
reading of the play over the summer of this year and had realized that maybe
cutting it into two was the thing to do.
I let Heather take the
lead here, and she provided the writer with advice on working through the play
and on possible venues to submit it to or work on it with. That's one of the
great ways dramaturgs can help writers. It's not just about being another set
of eyes on a piece. It's also about being able to direct a writer to a theater
whose mission or goals align with what he or she hopes to do with the piece.
We were soon joined by a
director and the talk shifted to the work and art of directing. An interesting
thing that happened this past Wednesday was that instead of people coming and
going throughout the three hours, people who arrived stayed, so the
conversations began to overlap or people began to be able to share their
experiences or bounce thoughts off of each other. It wasn't just Heather and me
answering questions.
The director expressed a
deep interest in really diving into the historical context of the plays he
works on, figuring out the little details that really cement a play in its
period. He was also very much into taking a different approach to commonly
produced plays and to working music and dance into the shows he worked on.
Our third and final
visitor was another playwright. She had some questions about the process of
working with a dramaturg and the process of writing plays. One question that
stood out to me was how does a playwright figure out her story? What role does
the dramaturg play in pointing out the story to a writer or in helping her
shape that story?
To me, the role of the
dramaturg is to help the play find its story. But, that can feel a bit sticky,
as you don't want to tell a playwright, "this is what you're saying."
Finding the balance between, “this is what I'm reading in the piece,” and
insisting that that is what is being said is very difficult.
It all boils down to
having a solid relationship with a writer, but what do you do before you have
the relationship? Stepping too far one way or another can break that bond
before a dramaturg and writer really have a chance to get going.
The writer also brought up
questions about having multiple dramaturgs read and respond to a play. In a
way, her question gets back to a discussion Heather and I were having at the
start of the day's project, but I didn't think to make the connection at the
time. We were discussing plays that are submitted, accepted, and ultimately
workshopped at multiple festivals/workshops/theaters over the course of a
season. When does that become an issue for the writer or when is having
multiple workshop readings having too much workshop readings?
I like to ask questions
and encourage responses, so I think I will end here. More to come in the next
few weeks.
BALTIMORE/DC –
Catherine María Rodríguez
The first Open Office
Hours in Baltimore covered a range of topics, from submissions and
devised/adapted works to burnout and dream processes. Our guest was Hannah
Hessel Ratner, a freelance dramaturg who works in the education department at
Shakespeare Theatre in D.C.
A local playwright kicked off the conversation by asking for feedback on a
script submission; this particular play, she shared, had made it to the
finalist round for several new play festivals – but had never been selected.
After reading the cover page, Hannah and I weighed in. The playwright's
write-up on the play was more of a beat-by-beat synopsis. While it noted that
the play was a farce, that tone and sense of playfulness was missing in action
here. Hannah suggested that this paragraph be leveraged as a teaser and
recommended that spoilers be hinted at but not fully divulged. Folks from
Twitter echoed this and added that expository information is less enticing than
reading what's exciting about the journey of the play. We moved on from there
to talk about devisers and brainstormed the following list of good ones to
check out, with thanks to those who joined us at the roundtable and those tuning
in via Twitter:
- The Wooster Group
- Rude Mechanicals
- Steve Berkoff
- Dog & Pony D.C.
- Caryl Churchill
- Sojourn
- Cornerstone
- XOXO CLT
- Little Green Pig
- Haymaker
- Hidden Voices
- Pig Iron Theatre Co.
- SITI Company
- PearlDamour
- The TEAM
- Bricolage Theatre
- 500 Clown
The conversation
then turned to adaptations, and we were particularly interested in the topic of
translating intangible qualities, like spirituality and mysticism. Hannah spoke
about the "experiential" qualities of her dramaturgy, drawing from
her relationship to words and visuals (her husband is a poet, and she has a
design background). A physical and visual vocabulary, she advised, is just as
useful as knowledge of random tidbits. Experiential dramaturgy is empowering
for the players, she said.
A young
theater professional piped up to ask about burnout. Amid suggestions to take
time for oneself, say no, and talk to non-theater folk about theater (which is,
we were assured via Twitter, quite refreshing), we stumbled into discussing
dream dramaturgical processes. Everyone had slightly different ideas
(exploration without production limits; being considered a member of the design
team; specificity as a guiding principle)--but the shared value was true
collaboration and engagement between dramaturg and creative team from the
onset. So, it seems we all appreciated being seen as more than just the arbiter
of research or the script junkie. Our engagement, we agreed, extends into
audience relations, marketing, and more.
By the end
of the Hours, we were excitedly talking about reframing the conversation around
failure for ourselves, taking risks as artists and institutions, and guiding an
audience to "lean in" rather than "lean back" in their
seats.
With a
revolving door of visitors and online shout-outs from New Dramatists, Dog &
Pony DC, and a stream of individual folks, it was an exciting start to the Open
Office Hours in Baltimore and the fall 2014 session.
Join us on
on 9/17 from 4-7pm at Dooby's Coffee (Baltimore) for the next session,
with special guest Otis Cortez Ramsey-Zoë.
¡Sonrisas!
-Catherine
