Historiography – ‘the pursuit of truths about the past within the conditions and constraints of possible knowledge’ (Postlewait, 2009, p.1)

Thomas Postlewait outlines that historians ‘must transform the artefacts into, develop supporting evidence for their hypotheses, place historical events in appropriate contexts…’ (2009, p. 1). In many cases this can be useful and help people develop an understanding of the past. Yet as a pro Stalin picture could have been staged and false, theatre documentation can be just as unreliable.

Theatre is ephemeral. There are hundreds of ways, such as recording, reviews, pictures, of documenting theatre, but it is impossible to capture the spirit and liveness of the event. From past events, pre television, we have little actual sources, some reviews or accounts of the event, but they are through the lens of an onlooker and can only be seen as bias. Furthermore, we have the actual texts of scripts but there is no one of truly knowing whether Alfred Jarry wanted Ubu Roi to shock as it did (or has been reported), or how it truly felt to stand in the Globe through one of Shakespeare’s plays.

In addition, video recordings are just as unreliable. We are not watching a live performance, we are watching what someone else has watched. Someone has decided for us what we see and when. It certainly is a good thing to record these events especially in this way as aesthetics and general performances can be picked up and analysed but due to the ephemeral fleeting nature of live performance, some things can never be understood.

Why is Historiography important?

‘Every performance, if it is intelligible as such, embeds features of previous performances: gender conventions, racial histories, aesthetic traditions – political and cultural pressures that are consciously and unconsciously acknowledged’ (Diamond, 1996, p.1).

Like all fields, an understanding of drama’s past helps embellish and strengthen performances today and in the future. Not only can you learn from mistakes made from those of the past but also see how audiences reacted to certain things. For dramaturgs it is essential in order to educate their show with as much insight and knowledge as possible in order for it to be as successful as possible.

As a result of the importance of historiography, plays are haunted by its predecessors. Audiences do not arrive at a show oblivious to theatre as ‘Everything in the theatre, the bodies, the materials utilized, the language, the space itself, is now and has always been haunted, and that haunting has been an essential part of the theatre’s meaning to and reception by its audiences in all times and all places’ (Carlson, 2001, p.15). If a famous play such as Hamlet is being performed, an audience  member brings with them several things. They may have seen a production, or several, of the play before and find themselves comparing the production to that which they have already seen. This can work with famous actors too. A famous actor will not only be seen as the role they a playing on stage but also previous roles in which audience members may recognise them from. This theme of ghosting can work in both a positive and negative sense depending on each of the externalities.

Below is a presentation on how Alan Bennet’s The History Boys is haunted by it’s original cast and the Britain in which it was set;

Works Cited

Carlson, M. (2003) The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press

Diamond, E. (1996) Performance and Cultural Studies. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Postlewait, T. (2009) The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false.
A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false’ – Harold Pinter, 2005.

As Paul Fry states ‘without doubt one of the most murky concepts to which we’ve been exposed in the past twenty or thirty years’. As a result, composing a definition of postmodernism is almost impossible as each different art form has its own measures for defining it. This is why is cannot be seen as a movement as there is no unified direction or intention of the postmodern artists and rather a further sense of the individual. Philip Auslander attempts to define a postmodernist as someone whose work possesses ‘stylistic features that align them with postmodernism as a feeling, an episteme, rather than a chronologically defined moment’ (2004, p.98). Auslander then continues to discuss postmodernism’s effect on art. He states ‘Michael Benamou… identifies performance as “the unifying code of the postmodern”‘ (2004, p.99).

‘What exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?’ – Lethem, 2007.

Postmodernism ‘carries modernist principles beyond anticipated boundaries’ and distinctively ‘rejects modern principles altogether’ (Whitemore 1994, p. 2). Art of the post-modern form aims to ask questions rather than supply the audience, spectator or passer-by, the answers to anything. The definitive message is not as clear-cut as oppose to other forms, such as its predecessor modernism. Postmodern spectators are essentially in control of what they get out of a performance. John Whitmore argues that they are ‘given the creative leeway to bring meanings out of the experience through an interaction with the seemingly disordered signifiers of the performance’ (Whitmore, 1994, p.19).

Whitmore also discusses the fact that postmodern artists ‘are challenging the centrality and sacredness of playscripts’ (1994, p. 1). The artists are using these plays as a place to begin and eventually deconstruct them ‘in order to speak more directly to the contemporary audience’ (1994, p.1). This form is not only used by the theatre but by artists such as Andy Warhol, with distinctive pop-art technique, by using past paintings or photographs and then embellishing them as exemplified by the painting of John Lennon above.

‘They may use playscripts, new and old, as a place to begin a production, but they do not feel compelled to treat the playscript as a sacred altar to be devoutly worshipped’ – Smidt, 2005.

Andy Warhol got his commuppance from Gob Squad who created their own stage version of his 1965 film Kitchen

The piece explained and de-constructed Warhol’s film creating a totally new intending to be ore appropriate for a contemporary audience. These ideas of renewing and revamping old creations inspires my own work and i aim to introduce things from the past in a new light in my final performance.

Works Cited

Auslander, P. (2004) Postmodernism and Performance. In: Steven Connor (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lethem, J. (2007) The Ecstasy of Influence. Harper’s Magazine, February 59-71.

Pinter, H. (2005) Art, Truth and Politics. [speech] Stockholm, 7 December. Availabe from http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=620 [Accessed 4 October 2014].

Schmidt, K. (2005) The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

Whitmore, J. (1994) Directing Postmodern Theater: Shaping Signification in Performance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

‘As there is no one way to create theatre, there is no single model of the Dramaturg’

What is Dramaturgy?

For one reason or another I used to think that dramaturgy was purely the context of the play, which Adam Versényi proves that I only knew one aspect as dramaturgy ‘must include knowledge of the distinctions between periods, movements, or styles’ (2003, p. 386). The art of making sure thinks are accurate in terms of theme, setting and all the other aspects of a performance. Yet when looking up the Word Dramaturgy in the Oxford English dictionary, I was faced with the following definition:

Dramaturgy: [mass noun] the theory and practice of dramatic composition.

So I loosely had the theory part of it right, but it was the practise that I had never really heard of. Versényi outlines that dramaturgy is ‘the study of how meaning is generated in drama and performance’ (2003, p.386). This gives dramaturgy a more grounded place but still keeping with the dramatic composition side of things. The composition of a piece is important to the desired intention because you want an audience to feel certain emotions at certain points which all put together, in the correct order, will deliver the desired response. This is how themes and plots can be conveyed clearer and more accurately.

The Role of the Dramaturg

So what does a dramaturg do? As stated before a dramaturg must have a vested interest in the themes, resonances and context of the plays in which he or she deals with. Dramaturgs act as an emulsifier between the playwright, directors and other creative to ensure the performance has a clear direction and that it is stuck to. This may include pointing ‘out consequences of the choices that a playwright makes’ (Copelin, p.18), or following from what was discussed before ‘suggest alternative structure, the rearrangements of scenes, the dramatic need for more or fewer characters’ (Copelin, p.18). Despite this involvement in the process, it is important that the dramaturg keeps ‘distance from the process in order to be able to ask questions about it’ (Bozic, 2009). This ultimately helps with the original intentions and threads outline at the beginning, but if too much distance is kept the dramaturg can become an onlooker and somewhat obsolete to the process.

The Emergence of Dramaturgy

Mary Luckhurst, in Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre, begins to investigate the origin of the word, which all reflect its root comes from making and/or doing dramatic art. A dramaturg may not necessarily mean this today but they are certainly influencing both practises. Furthermore, Dramaturgy only officially arrived in the UK in 1963 when Kenneth Tynan became the Literary Manager of Laurence Olivier’s (Artistic Director) new National Theatre. This was centuries after countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries had started regarding Dramaturgs as the ‘lynchpin of mainstream, state funded theatre’ (Luckhurst, 2006, p.1). Since then play readers, advisers and critical and practical experts have been ‘accepted as an integral part to theatre-making’ (Luckhurst, 2006, p.1).

Challenges of the Dramaturg

Despite many not actually knowing what one is for, or how they help any process, the strife of a dramaturg does not end there. Although claiming to be ‘connoisseurs of text, staging, production values, acting choices, a play’s philosophy and its place in its artistic context’ (Copelin, p.22) dramaturgs can often find themselves being shunned by others in the creative process. Directors, producers and even sometimes actors take it upon themselves to perform the previously stated tasks making the role of the dramaturg redundant as all necessary dramaturgy has been outsourced.

Another issue dramaturgs have faced is the hostility by the American and British theatres as egos in a process cannot relinquish that control. The playwrights and the directors do not want other people judging their work as they have enough of that from each other. In addition to that, especially in America, dramaturgs are seen to make things too theatrical. We learn from Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasbourg the key of acting stems from the self and the emotion of being human as oppose to acting at all, but it is believed that the dramaturgs need to make pieces commercially viable and theatrically sound. They may have a slightly stepped back approached now, but the origin of the dramaturg does lead back to theatricality.

As theatre is become more diluted, dramaturgs, especially theatre ones, are becoming harder to use effectively. Dance, technology and the escapists from theatre have left the needs for expertise and knowledge in a grand amount of areas. Companies are now turning to choreographers, technicians and other experts to collaborate with to make the use of the aspects being introduce to theatres.

Me and Dramaturgy

Over the summer I wrote, directed, produced and marketed my own show to go up to the Edinburgh fringe festival. So I gained experience in both side of being a dramaturg, both the production side and the business side. During this period I had to figure what would sell tickets and make a stamp at the Edinburgh fringe as well as staying close to the threads I set out for the piece at the beginning. If financial capabilities were larger I would definitely use a dramaturg as they can cover a lot of things as well as holding everything and, possibly more important, everyone together.

Works Cited

Bozic, A. (2009) On Dramaturgy – Statement. Performance Research 14 (3) 12.

Copelin, B. (1995) Ten Dramaturgical Myths. In Bert Cardullo (ed.) What is Dramaturgy? New York: Peter Lang, 17-34.

Luckhurst, M. (2006) Dramaturgy: a Revolution in Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

National Theatre (2014) Kenneth Tynan. [online] London: National Theatre. Available from http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/welcome-to-the-national-theatre/the-history-of-the-national-theatre/kenneth-tynan [Accessed 20 September 2014].

Versényi, A. (2003) Dramaturgy/Dramaturg. In Dennis Kennedy (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 386-389.