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5

WHY THIS, HERE, NOW?

It is the fundamental question of theatre-making and should be part of all aspects of the selection and production process: Why this play, for this audience, at this moment?

There are so many ways the question of why this play is answered just in the selection process. The mission statement of a company is going to play a part, as is its casting pool, its audience, its physical location, the availability of rights, the technical requirements, the rest of the season, and the seasons before. The practicality of why the play is selected and the artistic choices that support the production’s “here” and “now” have tangible as well as artistic considerations. A season is selected for a given time and place and is also made with close attention to the various ways a play can speak to an audience. A director chooses her concept and a designer’s work is based on the point of communication to the audience. Not a generic or hypothetical audience, but the one drawn from the members of that community from that time and place. Actors present directly to that particular community and all of the publicity, outreach, educational, and development materials are customized to the specificity of a group in a place and a time.

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This three-part question – why this, here now? – provides the foundation of the mindset to dramaturg and it is these topics that tie together the elements. This chapter examines each part as a separate question, while acknowledging they are intertwined and interdependent and it is their combination that creates a fundamental aspect of the mindset to dramaturg. The tactics of asking and answering questions, the holistic viewpoint and attention to timing work together in order to make the production as closely attuned to the three questions as possible. Each selection made, each question asked, every play chosen and every piece of audience outreach is predicated on these questions. The choices are deliberate and specific and geared to an event in a particular place at a particular time for a particular audience.

Why this, here, now? Each part of the question has its own process of discovery. All of the contributions and tasks the dramaturg performs with and for the production team and audience ultimately reflect the attentiveness to these vital parameters. The research and input the dramaturg offers is not generalized for productions of the play. Sometimes the question arises: why not use the dramaturgy from a previous production? However, the work that is general enough to be transferable is not going to be particularly effective. The mindset and output is tailored to the specific production the dramaturg is working on, and that production has a particular audience and a specific time. The pieces of the mindset dovetail into the specificity of this play, here and now, and that knowledge characterizes the input and the output the dramaturg provides throughout the production process.

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Why This Play?

The first parameter is the play – why this play? This element is addressed early in the process if the dramaturg is involved in the season planning. When that is the case, the issues that are raised include both the practical and philosophical. Some of the practical considerations include the nature of the producing theatre, such as if there is a resident company with casting requirements. There are questions of resources in terms of time, personnel, and budget. Theatre space and configuration will play a part, as well as the kind of work offered by the theatre community in the area. Play selection will also take into consideration the kinds of work offered in previous seasons, influence of a subscriber base, desire of the resident artists, and time of year.

There are a host of practical considerations that are part of season planning. The dramaturgical input can assist that process as well as the more philosophical or artistic considerations of play selection. These philosophical considerations generally consist of the mission statement of the theatre, the overall theme or purpose of the season, as well as the conversations and interactions to have with the audience. The selection of a particular play is determined by the understanding of who the audience is, what they want to and/or should talk about. Are there specific social or political issues that are of particular significance in the community? Have there been incidents or events that have gotten attention on a community scale? What kind of questions and ideas will challenge them? Inspire them? What do we need to be talking about? Play selection is an opportunity to find work that will be meaningful and significant for the audience. It will reflect the kind of art the company wants to create and the audiences for whom it is created.

It is useful to ask the question throughout the process. Why this play? It is not a question asked only during play selection, and often the dramaturg will not be a part of the season planning so he examines this question for the first time when he begins working on the production. Why this play? Wherever he first encounters the play, in selection or in production, the answer needs to be found in order to enhance the experience for the audience.

When the dramaturg is involved in play selection he is privy to the conversations around the practical and philosophical considerations behind the choice and those conversations will help frame the dramaturgical framework of why this play. If he is not part of the selection, he starts with the script and initial conversations with collaborators to get some sense of what came before, though ultimately it is a matter of text and production that illuminates the answer to that question. Why this play is a dramaturgical question and is answered through a broad-based point of view on the meaning and import of the story being told.

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Why this play? For example, a theatre company chooses a season of work dedicated to contemporary American women playwrights. The artistic management decided to take an active part in the national discussion around gender parity in the theatre by producing a season of women writers. They select Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage, The Flick by Annie Baker, The Language Archive by Julia Cho, Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, and Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks. It is a collection of award-winning plays with a range of styles and subjects that will provide a theatrically diverse season. The goal is to produce more plays by women playwrights and to inspire conversations about gender parity in the theatre.

Why this play? Looking at another example, a university program is dedicated to producing classics. The program director selects Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and John Dryden’s 1677 telling of the same story All for Love. This selection allows for an exploration of language and story point of view, as well as examining somewhat lesser-known classics from the period.

We do theatre because it matters, and we hope to never squander an audience. The play is not performed because it mattered to another audience; it is done because it has something to say to our audience. So the mindset of the dramaturg is shaped through the close attention to all the points of contact he can bolster between the play and the performance, between the production and its audience.

The first read of a script begins the process of exploration for the answer to the question why this play. The dramaturg acquaints herself with story, character and the world of the play and in doing so looks for the aspects of the piece that create the broader narrative, that offer the potential points of connection and conversation. She makes note of the social, political, philosophical questions that are asked by the play. She looks at the given circumstances of the play, not only to understand the mechanics of how to put it into production, but to evaluate what these circumstances imply and what they may offer to the discourse.

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Why this play? A company is doing a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and the production finds resonance with a young audience who can connect quite directly to the conflict between the life that is expected of you and the life you want to live.

Throughout the production process the dramaturg compiles the narrative for “Why this play?” It is a way to help connect the elements of the production into a cohesive whole and help the collaborating artists maintain the connection. “Why this play?” is the question that prompts the ability and the need to look at the piece holistically and be seeing it as a composite whole even while the pieces are being assembled. It often becomes the basis for the audience outreach materials that we generate.

The question is straightforward; however, it rarely has a simple answer. The complexity of the work of a playwright and a production necessarily make it a more nuanced exchange, which is one of the reasons it is ongoing throughout the production. The answer takes into consideration what is known about the intent of the writer as well as the objective of the production. What we are trying to say is intrinsically linked to why this play and so the production concept or vision will necessarily be connected to the conversation. The dramaturg takes that further and looks at how that message is constructed as part of the evidence she gathers to answer. However, it is perhaps better to phrase it as a conversation rather than an answer, even though the idea is presented as a question. It is not a simple call and response and typically does not lend itself to a single, narrow answer. While we need to find specific and concrete elements to connect, they are a composite not a single response. The “why this play” is a prompt for the conversation that happens between the production and the audience.

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Why Here?

Here points to multiple levels of space, including the performance space, the specific location, in what city or town, and what part of that place, and the larger location. A play performed at the American Repertory Theater is happening at the Loeb Drama Center, at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the river from Boston, in New England, in the Northeast, in the United States, as part of what we designate as the Western theatre. In addition, here is also whom – it is the audience for whom the play is performed. Any of those “here” have resonance and can provide an entry point for the dramaturgical work.

Plays are not presented to a live audience because they mattered to someone else. Artists produce plays because they believe the play has something to say to their audiences. Whether they were written five hundred years ago or are being devised for the production, the focus is on the specific presentation to a particular audience. It is the audience that characterizes a large portion of the “here” in the equation. The space that is occupied is space shared, so the “here” of the production necessarily includes the people who gather to see it. The audience is the recipient of the production and is the accomplice to the discussion it inspires. In determining “Why here?” it is as much the group who gathers as it is the place they assemble.

The play does not need to be about us to be meaningful to us, which is important to remember when making the connections between play and audience. There is no need to try to force a direct point of contact that is explicit to the world of the audience, no need to try to make it about these people and their world. Why here is found through resonance. What are the ideas, characters, notions that speak to the audience? What makes the play worth presenting to this audience, and what is necessary that they see?

The pieces the dramaturg finds in the text and what she compiles from the ideas of the collaborating artists are assessed and assembled based on the anticipated audience, and what she comes up with as the point of discussion for why this play is shaped for that conversation with the audience to answer the question why here. Once again, it is a series of questions that bring about the combined answer. What is happening in the area? What kinds of issues and circumstances are parts of the community dialogue? Which ones are being ignored?

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The dramaturg understands the need to connect directly to the audience to inspire the conversations around this important question. Consequently, she strives to know who they are and the kinds of things they contend with. Of course the audience is large and diverse, we hope, so we look for broad ideas and issues and do not seek a standardized perspective or experience. We look for the things that will speak to members of the audience in a meaningful way in order to connect more directly with them throughout the production and its outreach.

Why here? A theatre company selects Anna Deavere Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. The theatre has a racially diverse audience and is located in a city that has recently seen protests and violence around police treatment of suspects. Smith’s one-person show is a series of monologues that were created from interviews with people who were directly and indirectly involved in the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the police officers charged with assaulting Rodney King. The play is intended to connect the historical event to the current climate in a way that allows the audience to confront the issues being faced by the community.

Here also refers to location and the place in which the theatrical event happens is an important consideration. This covers the performance space, neighborhood, region, and nation. Starting with space, the relative intimacy or vastness of the performance space is going to shape the nature of the visual landscape created by the collaborators as well as the experience of seeing it. If the performance happens in a non-traditional space, as some kind of installation, outside, or on any interior stage configuration, there is a difference in how the material is received and the spectators’ relationship to the events onstage. The dramaturg is attentive to that aspect as well, and helps to guide the experience onstage and off to make the discussion as relevant as possible in that specific space.

Why here? A group wants to explore the language and style of medieval theatre and presents The Second Shepherds’ Play from the Wakefield Cycle. The company produces the play in a large, open field. The production highlights the pastoral theme and emphasizes the lonely expanse of the characters’ solitude by moving the audience through a comparable kind of landscape.

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Generally in most city settings the concept of place includes the city block and the continent on which the performance happens, where the theatre physically resides, and we make note of the elements of place that can be used to connect to our audience. The audience moves through the external location to get to the performance, so the concept of “here” widens to include the events that happen in the area, and also the condition of the place itself. The topography, the relative upkeep, the view can all be an influential element to the audience experience. The classical Greek amphitheatres were constructed in such a way that the backdrop to the plays was the Greek world. It was vast and impressive and placed the tragedies in the context of a larger world and placed the audience at a vantage point to experience the stories from that perspective. The theatres that operate in precarious locations, that carry with them a feeling of danger, or one of consumerism and complacence, all affect the experience of the play. And all are part of the dramaturg’s attention and make up her response to “Why here?”

Location is an incredibly powerful element and is one that needs to be an operating principle in the dramaturgical mindset. While the world of the play is firmly established, through the various means that create it, it is a place that is superimposed onto a real place, created in a space that has a simultaneous identity of a conventional space. Rather than try to pretend the world of the play erases the multiple levels of place, we try to figure out ways to use them to enhance the experience of the performance. The performance is happening in a real place, and that place is integral to the understanding of it. When we connect to the who and the where, we can bring the production to a more meaningful connection and more relevant conversation. What is happening where we perform? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What are the things that make it unique? What about this place is going to connect the audience more completely to the place we are creating for them?

Why here? The answer is connected to the place and may vary greatly even within the same work. One company may select the play because of the geographical connection to the playwright while another may select the same play for a circumstantial connection to the story. Why here tells us one of the ways the audience is specifically engaged with the piece.

The challenge for the dramaturg is to navigate the multiple levels of place and person in order to keep in mind why this play is happening for this audience. And ultimately make that as consequential an experience as possible. The dramaturg shapes the findings and makes the discussion inspired by “Why this play?” into a discussion with this specific audience in a particular place and by doing so establish “Why here?”

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Why Now?

The final part of the equation is temporal, and this is perhaps the most exciting element of theatrical performance. It happens now, in time.

With contemporary technology there are so many forms of media in which a person has the capacity to work outside time, recorded with playback capability in the time and pace that the audience may prefer. A live performance exists in real time, and can be experienced only in that manner. Consequently, when talking about theatre, time becomes an important component and one that is necessary for the dramaturg to consider. The time of the performance, the experience of a real-time event, and most importantly the time during which these things occur.

Why this play now? In the same way that artists do not perform because it was important to some other audience, they do not select a play because it was relevant at some other time. Plays are done to say something to the given audiences at this moment in time. The experience of the production will be shaped to some degree by the circumstances of the time in which it is produced, and the more attentive the production is to this fact the better. Large and small issues affect the world of the audience which in turn affects the experience as an audience member. Theatre companies that operate during wartimes, where plays are performed during outbreaks of violence, are marked by that reality.

Time of day and time of year will affect the experience; however, the “Why now?” really addresses the larger influences of time that are felt by a community. A play exists in its own time, yet it happens in our time. As dramaturgs we look to link those things in such a manner that they inform each other. How can this play offer insight into the time in which we live? How does our experience in the world shape our understanding of the play? How can the play reveal something about the time in which we live? Once again, the purpose is not to make the play about now, but to find the points of contact to now; to recognize the power of the temporal reality of the theatre, coexisting in the time of the play and the time of the audience.

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Why this play now? Arthur Miller played directly with temporal layers when he wrote The Crucible. He used the Salem witch trials as an analogy for the contemporary politics of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He wrote the play with the idea of existing in both worlds, offering the late seventeenth century as a way to speak directly to the politics of the1950s. Audiences now read and see it with a twenty-first-century point of view and when the play is performed now, it contends with the three times in a way that can offer a tremendous dramaturgical potential.

Another kind of time experienced in production is the theatrical moment. While the play is happening for the audience at the time in which they experience it, it is also part of a larger scope of performance and will be affected by the conventions, practices, and tenets of that moment. The play is shaped by all of these aspects: the time of the audience, the time of the play, and when it exists in the performance tradition itself. All of these aspects will affect the experience of the audience and so all must be part of the consideration of the dramaturg in order to augment the connection of audience to production.

Why now? Sometimes the play is going to reflect the things that are happening to the audience and sometimes the play will consciously reject them. It can ask important questions or introduce notions that are pertinent to the moment in which it is seen. And it can allow for an escape from the time and place of the audience reality. Regardless of what is sought, the dramaturg is conscientious about the time and one of her primary responsibilities throughout the production timeline is the compilation of material for the discussion prompted by the challenge: why this, here, now? The audience at a live performance experiences the event of the performance. While they are privy to the action of the play, spectators to that time and place, the event itself happens in actual time and space and creates a dynamic event. That is the point of connection and the resonance of the performance. It is the fact that something happens in the presentation of story in real time. Our job as theatre artists is to help ensure that something is meaningful.

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The production team creates the world of the play. They offer the audience a visual and aural landscape to show a time and place in which to encounter a story. However, outside the real or conceptual door of that story is a time and place in which the audience lives. The point of true connection between audience and play is formed by the overlaps of those times and places. Not necessarily in an explicit sense, but in the conceptual ways in which the play reveals for the spectator something about her world, and how her world can offer insight into the play. It is the conversation that happens around the story told. It is the conversation that reveals why this play for this audience in this place at this time.

Again: Why This Play, Here, Now?

The dramaturg answers this three-part question from the first read of the script through the final post-show discussion. It is what shapes the work with the production team and is the point of reference for his role as advocate for the audience. The dramaturg’s mindset is steeped in the relevance of the work, in the reason it needs to be seen by its audience. This chapter has looked primarily at the way a production dramaturg with a set script will answer the question in relationship to the audience. However, the dramaturg also offers the context for this discussion with the artistic collaborators and audience of any project. His questions asked and answered, his input, and the content he provides are all in support of clearly asserting why this play, here and now.

The dramaturgical mindset is reliant on flexible and creative thinking. It demands close attention to detail while staying open to a “big picture” point of view. It asks us as dramaturgs to be conspicuously present in the moment while maintaining an awareness of the point in the future in which we meet the audience. It requires constant vigilance toward the time, place, and relevance of the performance and pushes us to understand more about the time and place in which we create. Our understanding of the play needs to extend beyond the mechanics of the script and the demands of the elements of production and incorporate a nuanced comprehension of the meaning and consequence of the play. We are charged with intimate understanding of both the where of the play and the where of the production. Finally, we are given the task of navigating the time of the play as well as the time in which it occurs.

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A theatrical performance should matter, and the way in which that is best understood is through the continued exploration of the important proposition – this play, here, now – that is an essential aspect of the mindset to dramaturg.

Summary

The mindset to dramaturg is based on the idea that the most important question to ask is, “Why?” The work of the dramaturg is focused on strengthening the points of connection to time, place, and audience.