by Lexi Hamill

My mentor John Kendall Wilson uses a description of dramaturgy that I was recently reminded of by a director that I’ll be working with during Cornish’s next season. “We don’t just want the dramaturg to go to the well of knowledge and wisdom and bring us back the water, we want her to go to the well of knowledge and wisdom and drink and come back to tell us what the water tastes like.” I think that this is a good seed for dramaturgy and I keep thinking about how to expand upon it and exceed it.

Now, as a discipline dramaturgy is meant to support other art forms which it serves, so the evolution of the future of dramaturgy is directly related to the needs of those art forms we serve, whether they be theatre, dance, performance art, etc. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean that we are passive when considering dramaturgy’s future. In fact, I believe that we shouldn’t be.

I want a dramaturgy that speaks clearly and sweetly with a big stick, a dramaturgy that has confidence in its stewardship of the theater, but will not bend so much as to serve under unfair conditions.

I want a dramaturgy that learns from the mistakes of the western education system and finds more tactics besides words on paper to educate performers and directors. More communal research, experiential research, performative research, and imaginative research is needed. Even if some of these (and I’d say because some of these) are subjective and treacherous ground to explore dramaturgically. All the better if we develop the tools to use these methods.

I want a dramaturgy that demolishes the separation that has been set up between us (the artists) and them (the audience and communities we serve).

I want a dramaturgy that is not afraid to get messy. In some ways I sense that dramaturgs fear getting tangled up in the cracks between the personal and the academic, the subjective and the objective, and any other position that blurs boundaries, whether it be our own boundaries or someone else’s. We should engage these tough spaces, tangled as they are and appreciate them for that messiness. The goal is not to untangle them, but to see what can be found in that web. These webs are places where dramaturgy can thrive due to the amount of creative energy, thought, and questions around these points of contention.  

I want a dramaturgy that is fearless in engaging with the world beyond the theatre. I want dramaturgy that doubles as activism and goes hand in hand with participating actively in a nation and encourages others to do so as well.

I want a dramaturgy that helps to do away with “the play you go see once and never do anything with again in your life.” Dramaturgy should be at the forefront of fostering ongoing performances, projects, and dialogues with the community that serve the community as a whole. I am already in preproduction work at Cornish’s for  Ajax in Iraq by Ellen McLaughlin. Marya Sea Kaminski, our director, basically turned to me and said: “I always talk a great game when I start productions about really engaging with the people whose stories we’re telling, and then I get into rehearsals, and suddenly the run is here, and I’ve done maybe half of what I said I’d do.” This seems to be a common theme in the theater and dramaturgs have every ability to help alleviate that issue.

“We don’t just want the dramaturg to go to the well of knowledge and wisdom and bring us back the water, we want her to go to the well of knowledge and wisdom and drink and come back to tell us what the water tastes like.” And then once we know what the water tastes like, we can dig into the creative aquifers at our feet, build a well shared by artists and the community, and drink, time and time again, together as citizens.