Work in Progress Dramaturgy Festival at Newcastle Playhouse

Work in Progress Dramaturgy Festival at Newcastle Playhouse.
by Hanna Slättne
Freelance Dramaturg

- Inspiring and daunting.

Two years ago Newcastle Playhouse employed a resident dramaturg: Duska Radosavljevic. Partly in response to questions of what a dramaturg does Duska and Claire Malcolm of New Writing North staged a pioneering festival exploring dramaturgy as a craft in the autumn of 2003 at the Playhouse. It was a brave and ambitious project realised through a joint effort between Northern Stage, Newcastle University and New Writing North setting out to explore work processes in developing new writing involving a dramaturg. The four-week project consisted of three weeklong workshops developing 3 plays by authors associated with Newcastle Playhouse and New Writing North. Present in the room were actors, a director, the writer(s) and a dramaturg.  In the fourth week the work was presented either in the form of a reading or a discussion on the process to an audience.  The festival also included dramaturg-led workshops for writers on verbatim theatre and on exploring non - dramatic writing for the stage.

I was invited to work with the director Deborah Bruce on an idea for a play by Bea Campbell and Judith Jones. A meeting was set up a few weeks before our work together started where we were introduced to each other and to the idea of the play. There was no script yet, but Bea and Judith had done a huge amount of research on their idea which focussed on contemporary Protestant masculinity in Northern Ireland. I realised quickly that neither of Deborah, Bea nor Judith had worked with a dramaturg before and was not entirely sure what I could contribute. I also had a notion that this aspect of the project had not been emphasised to other participants as we set out on our collaboration. Therefore we all came to the workshop with different agendas which proved to create a challenging scenario for me as a dramaturg and as the ‘newcomer’.

As there was no script for me and Deborah to discuss prior to the workshop and we had not access to the research which had been done, our discussions centred on what we knew of the characters and how to use the time most efficiently. I did as much research I could which I sent to Deborah but we were not sure how relevant it would be to the actual story. We both read books on Loyalists and Northern Ireland and came to the workshop as prepared as we could.

The workshop was a most inspiring experience mainly due to Deborah’s sensitive and challenging approach to exploring the ideas of Bea and Judith and a group of very experienced and intelligent actors. For me as a dramaturg it was stimulating but difficult. I had no script to work with; the playwrights were not forth coming with sharing their vision.  As fairly inexperienced theatre writers their agenda was less to explore collaborative theatre practice in developing their play but more to get ideas of how to transform their substantial amount of research and thinking on the subject to the stage.  Deborah made most use of me in our discussions after each day reflecting and planning the following day.  We were both at a loss initially with what was expected of us but agreed that Deborah’s job was to make it an interesting and challenging week for the actors whilst my job was to support her, reflect on the process in the rehearsal room and afterwards to the festival team: Alan Lydiard, Duska Radosavljevic and Claire Malcolm.

As the week went on the actors did some wonderful and inspiring work and we were given some material by the writers consisting of monologues exploring the characters and then eventually some dialogue. Using this material and the improvisations the actors had done Deborah started to explore different potential structures of the piece and the use of the space, physicality and crucial to this piece time. As the week went on she turned less to me for support and used less of my prepared research, suggestions and structural work. This is something every dramaturg is familiar with and albeit it is frustrating, I understand that it happens when directors don’t actually know how to work with a dramaturg.

The Newcastle workshop made me acutely aware of the difficult task that the Dramaturgs’ Network has taken on. At the time it seemed nearly impossible to explore a relationship, which should evolve over a full production in a short week with participants who were not committed to that exploration or had an interest in using a dramaturg.  How do we constructively explore the work processes? How do we introduce dramaturgs to director’s who have not worked with them before?  How do we allow the dramaturg the space to do his or her job within tight existing processes and resources?  I am not even considering what many people probably think at this moment – just don’t do it! Because I firmly believe that the contributions by a dramaturg do add value and will make theatre take a leap forward. Hence for me and for the network, the big question remains, how do we find those interested theatre practitioners who might be new to the idea but willing to commit to the process to see what we can do together?

Hanna Slattne

Freelance Dramaturg

Posted by Hanna at 04:19 PM in Articles | Email this entry

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