This Dramaturgy Database reflects our ongoing research of dramaturgy at Utrecht University. The database consists of (full text) interviews with Dutch and Flemish dramaturges, essays and reports on dramaturgy seminars and other documents that show how (Dutch) dramaturgy has developed in the past decennia.
A dramaturg at work (in orange boots).
Courtesy to dramaturgs Anna Wagner and Nele Beinborn (Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm), photo Gabriel Poblete
This picture perfectly captures the work of a dramaturg, which is strongly characterized by flexibility. As Bojana Kunst notes, ‘as a participant in the process, the dramaturg can occupy a variety of roles: those of practical dramaturg, producer, festival director, stage manager, writer, journalist, teacher, workshop leader, coach, lecturer, academic, artist, dancer, production network member, cultural politics advisor, mentor, friend, compass, memory, fellow traveller, mediator, psychologist. The complexity of the dramaturg’s profession – the affective ability to move between theoretical reflection and practical knowledge, to be an external eye and an involved participant at the same time – is often too hastily reduced to a sort of aesthetic elusiveness.’
Bojana Kunst, ‘The Economy of Proximity: Dramaturgical Work in Contemporary Dance.’ Performance Research 14.3 (September 2009): 81-88.
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Chasing fleeing animals – on the dramaturgical method and the dramaturgical analysis of teaching
In this article the authors use dramaturgy as a lens for describing and analysing teaching. An interesting example of expanded dramaturgy, in which dramaturgy is used in a pedagogical context. The teaching examples are taken from a professional workshop where student teachers and their instructors teach Norwegian 7th grade pupils. The article examines how dramaturgy has a place in classroom research. The article shows how dramaturgical analyses of teaching can proceed, step by step. This is followed by a discussion of what dramaturgy as a method can contribute to classroom research.
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