What is Dramaturgy?

Sometimes dramaturgy is wrongly realized that ‘the way of theatre participation of people who majored in humanities’ or ‘assistant of director’. However, it is certainly misunderstanding, and the category of dramaturgy is very widespread. To be accurate, dramaturgy encompasses all of work of playwright, composer, director, actor, designer of each part and so on. Because, in order to show for current audiences, dramaturgy leads and evaluate character, background, place, ideology, philosophy and so forth of a play.

The role of dramaturgy is divided into largely three sections, ‘Selecting of the play script’, ‘advising for director and actors’ and ‘educating for audiences’. After choice the play script, dramaturg makes a rehearsal script through translation and editing, and to research history of the play, in addition to interpret the selected play script and to find meaning of the show, for example, why Hamlet is shown in the current Korea. Generally, such works is with director, and if playwright is exist, dramaturg could discuss about editing, erasure, modification in terms of development of the play script with playwright. However, it is obviously respected that the scrip belongs to author. In the case of classical plays, dramaturg have to clearly understand all of backgrounds of written period like society, politics, tradition, custom, language and so on. Moreover, dramaturg actively participates from casting to rehearsal, and to advise background knowledge to all of member of the plays. Besides, dramaturg could advise on a show schedule for the year and content or concept of making the program book. For this reason, dramaturg is selected the person who study humanities for a long time or who has sufficient humanistic knowledge.

In the case of Korea, of course dramaturgy is very crucial in order to show, however dramaturg as a role of production is uncertain actually. So, generally directing team could take charge of dramaturg. For instance, when I was assistant director in Spring Awakening the musical, I have been in charge of dramaturgy as well. However, I didn’t carry out such all of work as dramatrug but just researched backgrounds in terms of social, political, educational, traditional and conventional in the 19th century Germany. I took a presentation with references like images of landscape, house, clothes and other props. The aim of the presentation was correct understand of the musical, and sharing the same imagination about the backgrounds. So, actors could avoid an abstract acting, and could express specifically, besides it could affect on the concentration of audiences, ultimately it could decide show’s quality.

In current development of theatre and performance, however, dramaturgy has demanded new style and form. Because, contemporary theatre and performance could not need text as much as before and text could be no longer the core element in the play. However, the most obvious one is that dramaturgy still necessary in terms of keeping the artistic value. Therefore, new dramaturgical forms and skills are needed.

 

References: 

Cardullo, B. (1995). What is dramaturgy?. 1st ed. New York: P. Lang.

Lehmann, H. and Primavesi, P. (2009). Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds. Performance Research, 14(3), pp.3–6.