Tag Archive | dramaturgy
Creating Accessible Theatre
“Access” is a hot word in theater discourse right now. Often conversations revolve around how to make a performance accessible, and the solutions people come up with usually have to do with – a matinee performance labeled as Family Friendly, one or two pre-planned shows with interpreters for Deaf and Hard of Hearing patrons, Relaxed […]
The Journey – Development Notes, 11.29.17
[This post is a continuation of a series about the developmental process of THE JOURNEY. Click here to read the previous post.] Our meeting work session today included Jeremy, the Assistant Director. Yo-El and I read the script aloud, alternating scenes, while Jeremy and Georgia listened and took notes. This was Jeremy’s first encounter with […]
Responsibility When Writing Outside of Personal Experience
For Playwriting I, our final is a one act to full length play. I am writing about a woman in her 70s managing PTSD after she was raped working for the army. I can only imagine what it is like to be that age and what its like navigating the world of the army. I […]
The Soul Through a Slit Lamp
The view through a slit lamp is equal parts intimate and clinical, often quite awkward. It’s an ophthalmological tool, used to examine the exterior structure of the eye. The gateway to the soul we are so crazy about. In the theatre world, we talk a lot about the different “hats” we wear, but I’m finding […]
The Dramaturg As Collage Artist
Last week in my blog post about the Dramaturg as Conceptual artist, I talked a little bit about the mass of parallel writing I often do when working on a project. When this material is synthesized for presentation to the production team, it takes on the format of a sort of document collage. These document […]
The Dramaturg As Conceptual Artist
The more I work as a dramaturg, the more I find myself exercising the part of my brain that belongs to a conceptual artist. There is a place for essays, concordances, glossaries, and histories. In fact, so far, I have always started with those things. I have to start with those things to write my […]
The Journey – Development Notes, 11.15.17
This post is inspired by the honest and straightforward reflection of the making of theatre in The Production Notebooks, edited by Mark Bly. The Journey began development in the fall of 2017. Yo-El Cassell was the instigating artist. This play is inspired by both Herman Melville’s Moby Dick: Or, The Whale and Ahab’s Wife: Or, […]
An Accidental Playwright
I’m on draft 11 of the show I’m developing for Quarter 4. It’s only 20 pages, but we’re predicting the runtime will be somewhere around 2h45min. Yo-El Cassell (Director), Georgia Zildjian (Dramaturg) and I (Narrative Designer/Dramaturg) have been meeting weekly for the past two months to iron out the story and create a script that […]
“An Exercise In Dialoguing,” Heavily Modified
This week in class we discussed the book The Process of Dramaturgy ( Dubliner, Fletcher, & Irelan, 2010) I’m going to use this educational space as an opportunity to explore a modified version of the “Exercise on Dialoguing” (found on Page 26 of the book). My modification focuses on These Three Sisters, an adaptation by Jeremy […]
Notes on things to do as a Production Dramaturg at BU
What follows started as a reference list for me, but I think it could be useful for me to be transparent with what I’ve learned in the hope that it can make the role of Production Dramaturg easier on other students. I am not doing this work perfectly. That’s part of why I’m writing it […]
Presentation Matters!
Presentation matters. I am someone who tends to focus on ideas, daydreams and questions, and forget about form. As Jon Savage emphasizes in his Painting and Drawing class, no one takes the content seriously if the presentation is weak. His class forces me to think about how much time it takes to make stronger choices […]
Engagement through Connectivity
con·nect /kəˈnekt/ verb bring together or into contact so that a real or notional link is established. join together so as to provide access and communication. link to a power or water supply. think of as being linked or related. form a relationship or feel an affinity. –English Oxford Living Dictionaries As the Connectivity Associate […]
BOUND Part I: Introduction
I was living in Portland, Maine, when I got the call. Or so the memory goes. Jasmine Ireland, my mentor, artistic soul mate, friend, had a proposition: move back to my coastal, rural Maine home and create a play for the 2016 high school one act competition. No questions asked, I packed up my apartment, […]
First Time Being a Dramaturg! Ah!
Night Owl: https://vimeo.com/218082778 Citizen: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505964534&sr=8-1&keywords=citizen I believed, before this summer and this class, that a dramaturg was vital to the creation process, but was not an artist. I believed that a dramaturg did research, and put together a packet of information for the cast and crew. The end. Dramaturges did not go to rehearsal, were […]
A Summer Away from Theatre
Little more than two weeks into classes, with a newfound major and a newfound sense of cynicism, I am left with one question on my brain: did I make the correct decision in my modified, but still fundamentally similar major? This summer, I remained on Boston University’s campus with a 9-5+ job, working days in […]
On Dramaturgy
dramaturgy is nimble, expansive, thrilling, agitating, full of discovery, nuanced, specific. dramaturgy is engaging (and it is responsive to the people it is meant to engage.) dramaturgy can exist in a play bill, but if that’s it, ugh. dramaturgy must be done by everyone working on the production. but… the dramaturg is an igniter. the […]
10 Questions To Ask Your Favorite Dramaturg Today!
Finally, after for years of hard work, I have turned in my final written assignment at Boston University. Of course, that assignment happened to be one of the most challenging: a dramaturgical dossier containing documentation of one’s process when acting as a dramaturg on a contemporary play. In honor of my work, I have compiled […]
Dramaturgy: Chicken Soup for the Soul
This afternoon, in our New Play Development class, we video chatted with dramaturg, theatre-maker, and all-around lady boss Catherine María Rodríguez. Hearing her speak passionately about how she defines dramaturgy, how her work intersects with activism, and her all-around joy to be doing what she does illuminated something within me. Ideas simmering below the surface began […]
I AM NOT A PLAYWRIGHT
There. Now that I’ve got your attention, I should probably inform you that I am probably a playwright. My caring and loving friends and professors keep telling me so. I remain skeptical. In my little life, I’ve started plenty of plays. I have a marvelous routine. I get to page 8 or so, and then I […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 