DRAMATURGY - CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Performance Research

Volume 14, No. 3 (September 2009) ‘On Dramaturgy’
Issue Editors: Karoline Gritzner, Patrick Primavesi and Heike Roms

CALL FOR PAPERS

Within a rapidly changing landscape of contemporary theatre and performance, the roles, functions and working conditions for dramaturgs are being redefined. The institutions of opera, dance and theatre keep certain cultural traditions alive by offering a platform for new interpretations. Yet the audiences are changing, in particular their knowledge of such traditions and their habits of perception, and in established as well as in experimental theatre, dramaturgy needs to develop strategies to implement aesthetically and culturally ambitious projects despite difficult conditions of production and reception.
What are dramaturgs doing within an environment that is no longer bound exclusively to a dramatic text and its author; within a working situation that becomes more and more collective; and within a creative process that may include performance, dance, and media art as well as a critical reflection on the politics of space and representation? What institutional pressures and pedagogical expectations are involved in the theory and practice of dramaturgy today?
Following the international conference “European Dramaturgy in the 21st Century”, held in Frankfurt/Main in September 2007, this issue of Performance Research interrogates contemporary dramaturgy as an expanding field of practices and skills, problems and strategies. It seeks to explore the pedagogical and institutional aspects of European dramaturgy and asks how and where the changes in dramaturgical practice actually take place.
The Issue Editors invite contributions that address any or all of the following areas:
•    current developments and changes in European theatre and its consequences for dramaturgical work
·    practices of dramaturgy in fine arts, film, music, dance, performance and media art, and interventionist work of all kinds
·    dramaturgical work as a collective practice
·    approaches to teaching dramaturgy in academic institutions and art schools
·    national and international networks for dramaturgs
·    dramaturgy responding to and challenging the needs of established institutions