• DRAMATURGY IN SINGAPORE •
According to Mark Turvin, both the English dramaturgy and French dramaturgie are words borrowed from the German sense of the word dramaturgie, which was used by the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Lessing in Hamburgische Dramaturgie (The Hamburg Dramaturgy), an significant series of essays published from 1767 to 1769. Dramaturgie is derived from the Greek word dramatourgía, which means ‘a dramatic composition’ or ‘action of a play’.
The genesis of the Dramaturg came with the hire of Gotthold Lessing by the Hamburg Repertory Company in 1767. Already an established playwright and theatre critic by this time, the Company hired him to work in tandem with the Artistic Director. They figured Lessing's public name recognition, and his ability to teach and publish, would give them legitimacy when he wrote positive pieces about their productions for various publications.
Rather than the rubber stamp they were looking for, Lessing was a man who violently fought against the pandering choices of the Artistic Director and the Company's lack of scripts by German authors. In his collection of essays entitled Hamburgische Dramaturgie (The Hamburg Dramaturgy), he called for the production of works by German playwrights and on Germanic topics. He lambasted the French farces the Company mounted, and demanded that the actors rid themselves of their glib styles in place of more honest, empathetic presentations. Even after his removal, he continued to write essays until the Company collapsed due to financial hardships three seasons after hiring him. By this time, though, playwrights and sympathetic theatre artists began to rally around Lessing. Before the end of the century, the position of Dramaturg had been established in all Repertory's in major cities in Germany. There was a tacit agreement that the Dramaturg assume the position of resident watchdog, promoting the growing German Romantic movement sweeping the country. They fought against pandering to the audience, striving to educate and challenge. They were often in constant conflict with the Business Manager, whose job was to oversee a much different bottom line. The resounding success of their nationalistic demands secured the permanence of the position to current day. Even now, German theatre people move smoothly between the positions of Dramaturg, Artistic Director, Playwright-in-Residence, Literary Manager, and Critic, sometimes working in several positions at once for different companies in neighbouring towns.
Dramaturgy made its way to America through 1960s academia. At Yale, under the tutelage of Robert Brustein, the education of theatre critics was moved from the English to the Drama Department. Brustein recognized the importance of creating a theatre critic that was more than an enlightened audience member. His future critics were taught the basics of performance, direction, and design, and given equal amounts of playwriting as well as reporting instruction. Because of internal strife in the programme, this career track was transformed from a theatre critic vocation to a dramaturgical one.
Simultaneously, influential playwriting programmes at the University of Iowa introduced the instruction of playwright's "advocates." These advocates worked one-on-one with playwrights, offering guidance, support, and suggestions. They never took credit for the script, but were instrumental in the transition of these scripts from playwright to director, and were responsible for the staged readings of the scripts prior to production. It was not long until the two universities saw the similarities of their programmes, and American Dramaturgy was established.
Adapted from The Dramaturg: Modern Day Court Jester, An Essay by Mark S.P. Turvin