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Dramaturgy Database

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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.

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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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Bertolt Brecht as Dramaturg

The article features Bertolt Brecht as a dramaturg. He became the dramaturg of the Munich Kammerspiele in Germany at the age of 25. He worked as a dramaturg with Erwin Piscator, leftist innovator of modern German theater, after his conversion to Marxism in 1926. He sponsored a dramaturgy training group in East Germany from 1949 until his death.

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