Oooooh….the rather brilliant 64 Million Artists folks have published their new report on Everyday Creativity. Drawn from three months of conversations with over 300 people it explores the role that the arts do and can play in society today. I’ve not read it yet but am excited to….
I’m up early going through my external examining and was reminded of EM Forster’s definition of plot and story in one of the essays:
“The King died and the Queen died” is story.
“The King died and the Queen died of grief” is plot.
Two summers ago I worked at the RSC as Associate Dramaturg on Midsummer Mischief. As part of the project they interviewed me for their in-house new work magazine about the role of the dramaturg. It was the first time I’d put my own definition in black and white and I found it incredibly useful. Coming across it again this morning, I thought I’d share it here:
What is a Dramaturg?
A favourite response is from Yale Professor of Dramaturgy, Katherine Sheehey, who writes that “among other things, a dramaturg is an in-house critic that is friendly to the production. Dramaturgy is generous honesty, rigorous curiosity, and passion for thoughtful theatre and theatre-making.”
The term “dramaturgy” refers to the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation: the means by which a story can be shaped into a performable form. All performance works have a dramaturgy, mostly sharing a set of base principles but diversifying widely within that. This dramaturgy is first created by the playwright/ makers when they construct a story for the stage, is developed in rehearsal by the director, designers and actors and then comes to full fruition in the interaction the performance has with its audience (this process varies, particularly if the piece is devised or physical, but the key points remain).
A dramaturg is concerned with supporting this process at some or all of these stages. In practice, that job might involve many different tasks from the identification of performable work to working with a playwright through several drafts to hands on support in the rehearsal room. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a cup of tea with a theatremaker as they wrangle with a particularly tricky aspect of their piece. However, always at the heart of the dramaturg’s role is the ability to constructively, clearly and sensitively question a piece of work towards making it the best it can be, without confusing, overwhelming or blocking those making it.
“We need to shift the register of our thinking to gain new perspectives on our own experience.”
I came across Ruth Little’s paper on the Dramaturg’s network site today. She calls for a dramaturgical thinking that is non-linear and instead concentrates on the observation of energy and movement.
I love what she writes about the place of dramaturgy at the heart of the storm and reading this paper my thinking moves swiftly to the maelstrom of narratives we are experiencing currently and our mistaken need for the linear at a time of energy and movement. In the right story we feel safe and assured and so we gravitate to them: but there are many stories, every one of them human and no single one is right.
How do we find a way for us all to live comfortably within the possibilities of the storm – at least sufficiently for us to gain those new perspectives and run with them?
DYNAMIC STRUCTURE and LIVING SYSTEMS: An unreliable pocket manual for the dramaturgical human
As I take the first steps back into work after my year with Tobias, I have been thinking a lot about what I want my practise to look like, how I want my working environment to be and what I have to offer.
One of things I’ve been thinking a lot about is ‘how’ we work with one another: how I want to work with others and how I want to work with. On this, I’ve been thinking about my approach to leadership and was inspired by this article from Sue Hoyle in Arts Professional on Generous Leadership. In particular the description of Gill Lloyd and Judith Knight of ArtsAdmin:
“unpretentious, non-name dropping, non-bandwagon jumping, non-manipulative, honest, caring, dog and child loving, perfectionist, professional, dignified and 100% committed”.
This feels like words to live by.
This morning, after days of rain, a waterlogged landscape is resting gently under a placid sky. Clouds have arranged themselves in neat strips, allowing clear bands of blue to permeate through. It’s not over, but for a moment, there’s pause.
I am settling in the seat of my stopping service across the Chilterns. A gentle roll call of stations, the hum of the engine, the doors’ gentle exhalation to meet each platform. Barely a soul. January. Sunday. All of that.
In an hour or so my froggy faced son will be wriggling in my arms, his playful yet insistent sound making demanding this or that (or just delighting in something, or just sounding, because he can), and I’ll cling to a jumble of consonants and wonder once again how deliberate their forming was.
And as my mind drifts from him back to these rain furrowed fields, I reflect that I too have been waterlogged these months, expanding, saturated, to contain the endless downpour of his unfettered living and the swell of love I gather it in. The swell of love, anger, loss, fear and joy. All of that.
And then the sun breaks through and the ditches shimmer silver, everything reflected in them all at once, and the doors inhale a family of four, a tumble of toddlers and a day’s plans of museums and tube lines and where we will eat.
I check my watch. The clouds rearrange themselves and load the horizon. Laden lakes wink and twinkle. Ponds conceal their depths with a lid of brightest light where weekend walkers wave as we pass, their dogs nuzzling into burrows, tails wagging with discovery.
The world stretches, breathes, takes it all in, stride by muddy stride.
Sarah Dickenson 