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Dramaturg.  Part two.  New works.

For me, this is the most exciting part of dramaturgy.  While you do uncover really interesting information when doing production dramaturgy, new works dramaturgy is where it’s at.  It’s fast-paced.  It’s exciting.  You see a new play form right in front of your very eyes, and, if the playwright is open to your input, you see your ideas shape the play into its best possible form.

New works are really my bread and butter.  This partially comes from my aspirations to write plays for a living.  If people aren’t interested in new plays, then I basically have no career ahead of me.  So I am an advocate for new work.  This is not saying that the classics aren’t important (I still love Death of a Salesman), but I don’t think our respect for the older works should hinder interest or investment in new, innovative art.  While the plays of Miller, Albee, and O’Neill still hold great meaning and insight into our modern age, there is nothing that can be more relevant to the here and now than something that is written in the here and now.  Many audiences are afraid of new plays, seeing something in its first iteration, but where would we be if audiences hadn’t taken chances on those playwrights I mentioned above?  Or Paula Vogel?  Or Sarah Ruhl?  Or Tony Kushner?

The aim of new works dramaturgy is to take what the writer already has and what they’re trying to say and clarify and strengthen it.  Sometimes, a playwright thinks that his message or even plot points are clear, but what is in his head does not quite translate to the page.  It is a dramaturg’s job to parse out what is being said, and help the playwright discern the most effective way to say that.  Oftentimes, it is taking an image or wording that already exists and giving it greater import.  For example, something that seems to happen frequently is that a playwright creates a symbol in the first half of the play but abandons it after the first few scenes.  Just reintroducing the symbol in the second act could strengthen the theme it illustrates and clarify the overall trajectory of the play.

Some playwrights are resistant to dramaturgs.  This is understandable, especially when the dramaturg is brought into the process at a later stage, like a first staged reading or even first full production.  The playwright has been working, usually in solitary, for months, possibly even years on this work, and then the dramaturg has the audacity to tell them that they need to change it?  What most playwrights come to realize after working with a good dramaturg (or at least we hope they realize) is that the dramaturg does not have malicious plans to change the play into something completely different from what the playwright envisioned.  We want to see their vision come to life in the most effective way.  We are really there to help, not hinder.  While I have met many dramaturgs who also write, like myself, when you are working on someone else’s show you have immense respect for what that writer is doing and you are not trying to push your own agenda or writing style on the playwright.  You are respecting what they do.

In this way, text is king.  As I indicated in my last post, dramaturgs are the biggest word nerds.  The importance of language is magnified ten fold in new plays, because you are still at a stage where you can control the words.  Watching a playwright do on the spot rewrites after being given a suggestion about the character’s vocabulary is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen.  You see the wheels spinning, the motors whirring, and then they produce the perfect sentence.

Dramaturgy is a very personal profession.  The role of the dramaturg in completely dependent on his relationship to the playwright and what that particular playwright needs from him.  For some playwrights, they just need the playwright to tell them things they already know but are too close to the material to decide.  It might benefit the play to cut a character entirely, and the playwright may know that, but because they have spent months with this character, they can’t bring themselves to cut it or convince themselves that the character is necessary.  Sometimes they just need the push and logic of a dramaturg to take that step.  Depending on the size of the production team, the dramaturg can also take all of the opinions of the rehearsal room and really pick out what the playwright needs to hear and what is best ignored.  The dramaturg can eliminate the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen” that is all too common in rehearsal rooms.

New works dramaturgy is quick and frenzied and thrilling.  There is anxiety and enthusiasm around a new play that you really don’t get with older works, especially if the company you’re working with is nurturing, inventive, and collaborative.  At its best, new works dramaturgy is a partnership between the playwright, possibly the director, and the dramaturg.  Each has the utmost respect for the other, and each is aware of his own aesthetic as well as the playwright’s, so they know how to tailor their opinions to fit the needs of the show.  I was lucky enough to be a part of a process like that this past summer.  Even as an intern, I felt comfortable enough at a table with the playwright, director, and dramaturg to voice my opinions and actually got to see them incorporated into the show. I think the show was better for it.  When the show opened, I felt like an integral part of the team, something that can be missing in production dramaturgy where you have left after the table work is over.  In new works dramaturgy, you are there every step of the way, watching incredible artists do their thing and feeling free to focus on the words and the dramatic arc and symbolism and themes and all of the nerdy stuff that you can’t help but notice.

Even writing about new plays makes me want to delve into some brand-new manuscript, devouring its innovations and hearing the distinctive new voice tumbling around in my head.  I want to help bring works to the stage that we have never seen before.  I want audiences to be excited about new works and not afraid that they might fail.  Because, hopefully, in the hands of a gifted playwright and capable dramaturg, the audience will feel that same enthusiasm and excitement as the lights rise on the career of a young playwright.

The University has Michigan has continued to display its astonishing ability to host first-rate events in the past few weeks, especially those honoring Black History Month. About a week ago, on February 10, nationally renowned spoken word poet J Ivy headlined a spoken word event at the UMMA. The evening began with an open mic portion, allowing a dozen or so aspiring poets to showcase their talents. I had the honor of joining them when the MC asked for an additional five performers from the audience, which gave me the very unique opportunity of reading my poetry in front of over 100 people. Although I was quite clearly an amateur and my poem did not have the substance of some others, (I immediately followed a girl who read her incredible poem about a girl being raped) the crowd warmly accepted my efforts. That is the beauty of an open mic- the quality is less important than the actual process of performing. The other poets were all far more talented than I was, and kept the audience thoroughly entertained before J Ivy’s segment.

Then it came time for the star. J Ivy has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry several times, and is most famous for his collaboration with Kanye West on the song “Never Let Me Down” on Kanye’s first album, College Dropout. J Ivy adds an entire spoken word poem (which he gave a rendition of at the event) in the middle of the song, which is also a testament to Kanye’s unparalleled creative genius. On Friday, J Ivy performed for over half an hour, reading some poems while also performing others. I particularly liked how he engaged the audience throughout the show, (“And the church says…”) and even jumped off stage during his finale. My favorite poem of his was called “Blind Date,” which told the story of a blind date he once went on that turned into a set-up to mug him. The story was so interactive, so vivid that it captured all of J Ivy’s best qualities in one poem. This entire event was the epitome of what a University-sponsored show should be: an opportunity for students to get experience performing followed by a professional exhibiting the art at its finest.

This past Friday, the 17, I took part in another student-performed event at the Work Gallery on State Street: the Word of Mouth Story Slam. Completely student run, the story slam crew hosts an event every month, in which students compete by getting five minutes to tell any story he or she chooses, based on that night’s theme. The stories are then scored on a ten-point scale by three different judges; the storyteller awarded the most amount of points wins. A few nights ago, as it was so close to Valentine’s Day, the theme was infatuation. Stories ranged from a girl’s infatuation with quirky situations, to the telltale signs of how a boy knew he was interested in a girl, to a serious account of a college romance. I was the second-to-last performer (out of ten) to tell a story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. As it was a much smaller crowd than the spoken word event, the acts were not nearly as strictly prepared and I was able to be much more personal and relaxed. I highly recommend the events to anyone who is looking for a night of intimate, enjoyable conversation and some darn good stories. There is only one slam left this school year, the Grand Slam in March, which will feature all of the winners of the events this year, so the performances will surely be worthwhile. Make sure you get to Work Gallery- I guarantee it will be worth your time.

Hello gentle reader!

I’m Corey, the newest member of the arts,ink team! I’ll be posting every Sunday, and I’m super excited to be here! Exclamation points! But. I’m terribly afraid this blogging will turn into an egotistical rampage where all I do is talk about myself. And no one wants to read that. So let’s take this first blog post and do just that. Let’s talk about who I am, where I come from, and why you should trust any word that comes out of my mouth…

I’m from a small town in south-east Michigan, near Toledo, Ohio. I’m a sophomore here at UM, studying Music Composition. I’m really into contemporary art, and fancy myself an amateur visual artist. I am a DJ at the local radio station, WCBN (listen to me live from 1-3am on Monday night/Tuesday mornings!). I dig most music, from hip-hop to avant garde jazz. Some of my favorite bands/musicians include tUnE-yArDs, Sufjan Stevens, Jack’s Mannequin, Steve Reich, Nico Muhly, Alarm Will Sound, and much much more….Most of my posts will probably be about music, but I’m exploring everything around, so expect some theatre, performance art and whatever else is floating around my mind.

But let’s talk a little about studying music composition, because this tends to raise the most questions with people I meet. This means I take classes in music, but I take lessons in composition. And writing music is what I focus on. I do play a few instruments (trumpet, piano, accordion), but I’m not that good (still pretty good though!). As a composer, I do write “classical” music. But I have a real issue with that term. That’s worth another blog post entirely, but I don’t feel that just because my music is played in a concert hall, that it should be any less fun/interesting/relevant than anything else you might listen to. So, as a result, I like to explore ideas of genre in my music. Perhaps the best example of that is my string trio with accordion, blacklight…

blacklight by Corey_Smith

In blacklight, I tried to incorporate a club music aesthetic into an otherwise very modern and dissonant soundscape. It’s somewhere between a love song to Lady Gaga and a critique of the culture that exists around clubs.

Some of my other work you can find at my soundcloud, but I’ll also link to this interesting piece, called the radio keeps saying the end is near, or something like that. This is a piece I wrote last Friday, in a TWENTY FOUR HOUR PERIOD. It was a super stressful “Composer Marathon” event that the school of music put on. Essentially, I was given the ensemble of Cello and Viola at 8pm on Friday night, and was expected to perform a piece on Saturday at 8pm. This is what happened…

It’s not a great piece, but I’m proud of it, for sure. It still needs some work still, but it was fun to do! Particularly to add myself to the ensemble and start screaming at the audience, THAT’s pretty fun.

Anyway, that’s me and my music! I’m really excited to be posting here and look forward to next week, where the subject won’t even be me!

Iceland is a contoured landscape of vibrant green and volcanic grey, of mossy color on a dark charcoal. It’s sometimes sand and ice and windswept plains, sometimes fire and carved earth and vast volumes of water, deposited and gouged. It’s dynamic, and unexpected. Somewhere, though, in the imagination, the color is always there.

Yet— yet, photographer Michael Schlegel has managed to capture Iceland in a series of square-cropped black and white. Each is a minimalistic frame of something, stark and ethereal. “When photography is not about colours but about emotions,” says a design blog. The blacks are deep and rich, the whites bright but somehow not blown out, as one might say of other pieces. Contrast is high, but not in an overly forced way; the focus of these photographs is not on minute textures and details, and yet it breathes texture. Even in simple greyscale, the gradients are at once robust and subtle.

Jagged outcroppings of stone arise from nowhere, at their feet pools of sea mist.  Wide sweeps of sky and water and land alike have, with the help of a long shutter, perhaps, have begun to oddslot flow as if they were the lot of them made of the same fluid substance, only in different densities. A pearly wash of ocean is offset by a knife of dark stone, just enough detail visible to hint at its cragged texture, but without brazenly displaying it. Less is more, so they say.

And it might be, indeed. The suddenness of the Icelandic landscape is already in itself full of the unexpected, the aesthetically pleasing. Who might suppose that there could be such a thing as conventional photography of it? Then someone like Schlegel comes along, saps out the color, removes the unnecessary, and suddenly the world is an entirely different place.

A dramaturg.  Webster’s defines us as experts in dramaturgy, which, in turn they define as “the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation.”  They also spell dramaturg dramaturge, which is common and I’ve never really found why we’ve decided to drop that little e at the end.

As far as dramaturg definitions go, this is one of the better ones I’ve heard.  I guess there’s a reason Merriam-Webster is still in business.  I’d like to shed a little light and give some first hand examples of what has constituted dramaturgy for me.  I think you’ll find most dramaturgs have different experiences, but we all have one thing in common: love for the text.

What that really translates to is that dramaturgs are the nerds of theatre.  If you’re still in high school mode and think of actors as Drama Club dorks, then you would be floored by just how dorkier it can get.  Read some of our Twitter conversations that include playwright puns and heady discussion about artistic responsibilities and new work philosophies and you’ll see what I mean.

In established work, a dramaturg is around primarily to help the director and actors best understand the material and make informed choices regarding their work.  Mostly, a production dramaturg in these situations is like a researcher.  For example, I worked on the University’s production of Spring Awakening recently.  The first thing I do when I get the script for a show is I read it twice.  I read it once for myself and then once to compile a list of terms, people, and places that the actors may need defined.  For some shows I’ve worked on, the glossary has almost reached 300 words, but for a regular show the total is usually around 100, give or take 20.  For Spring Awakening I think it was around 90 words.  I also try to include pictures as often as possible.

Going along that visual route, most dramaturgs also compile a visual research board.  For Spring Awakening this was fun because there are two worlds: 1891 Germany where the scenes take place and the interior monologue space which is based in contemporary pop-rock.  I included images of 1890s Germany, the German countryside, haylofts, expressionistic art, and post-punk to give a feel for the song world.  This is one of my favorite parts of the process, because it’s the one you really see the results of.  As much as dramaturgs and directors know the research is critical, it’s always a crapshoot if the actors actually use it.  Actors are invariably drawn to visual mediums though, and they will undoubtedly take some inspiration from the visual research board.

After those two steps are over, I get to more particulars of the production.  Each play has a few issues that are specific to the play.  For Spring Awakening, there were quite a few.  I had sections in my production binder about Lutheranism, 1890s Germany, Germany in general, abortion, teenage sexuality, and suicide.  This musical was also adapted from a play, so I had a section about the play and its author, Frank Wedekind.  I included the play’s production history and the difficulties it faced getting produced because of the subject matter.  I also always include a section on the writers of the show as well as any previous production history.  This gives the artists working on a show an idea of where they are coming from and what new levels they can take the show to.  It also shows where previous productions may have found difficulty so they know what to be aware of in the future.

Some production dramaturgs are also literary managers at their home theatres, so their dramaturgy sort of ends at the first rehearsal.  They send their research into the rehearsal room and hope it is utilized.  Then they must move onto the next project, starting the whole process over again.  The show in production is just a thought in the back of their mind, save the program article they will probably be asked to write, where they can share a little snippet of their research with the audience.  (Let me tell you, condensing weeks’ worth of research into a 300-word article is a challenge.)

Luckily for me, when working in the university setting, I’ve been able to pop in on rehearsals at my convenience.  I also try to make myself as available to the actors and directors as possible, which is much easier for us in this technological age than it was for our predecessors.  Without fail, new areas of interest emerge in rehearsal, whether it is a product of a new direction the director decides to pursue or an actor’s decision that they need more information on a location their character mentions offhandedly.  You may have included that place in your glossary, but the actor has decided that this location is instrumental in their characterization and they need more information.  This is the part that is fun for me, when the actors really delve into the script and begin asking interesting questions.
We’re also the first people to go to when you want to nerd out about syntax or word choice.  If you want someone to get giddy about script analysis, find yourself a dramaturg.  I could spend days thinking about the repetition of one word throughout a script and the different ways that it operates within the text.  That is my idea of a good time.

So that is one type of dramaturg.  Next week we can talk about new works dramaturgs.  They share a lot, but it is really a different world.  For me, it’s a more fun one too.