The Dramaturgy Database Analysis Part 3: What does dramaturgy mean to artists?

It is perhaps ironic that the most direct questions about dramaturgy reveal a confusion about what the word means. When Tim Crouch is asked about the 'relevance' of dramaturgy in his work, he replies

It sounds like dramaturgy is integral to my work, although the word itself rarely appears in my process.

Ciaran Myers adds

I don’t like the word “dramaturgy” because I prefer to think of myself as more of an artist than an organizer.
While Angry Puffin are more elliptical.

Ask yourself why anyone writes a play. Ask yourself why people go to see plays, why Art is important, why the loss of Art is a disaster. Ask yourself why the heart beats.

And before going on to give a very thoughtful and detailed answer, Laura Ingram claims

In all honesty, I haven't ever given the concept of dramaturgy much thought. 

Within this sample, then, dramaturgy is not a word that has particular currency. Although Ingram and Crouch go on to recognise how the definition given by Vile ('decisions that define and shape performance') does apply to their processes, the idea of dramaturgy as a category of thought is secondary to their actual making process. 

Nevertheless, the artists often grapple with the question and identify strands within their process that appear to come under this broad definition. Somewhat reluctantly, Myers admits that

I can’t deny that dramaturgy is the alpha and omega of everything I do. This play in particular leans on the relationship between actor and performer.

connecting the choices made in the making with the eventual reception of Touch. Joan Cleville, meanwhile, is far more comfortable with dramaturgy and, like Crouch, sees it as a structuring approach to his choreography.

It helps me to define the parameters of each piece: what is possible or impossible inside the reality of each work. There is also a sense of dramatic journey in everything I create, and dramaturgy offers me inside clues about the overall structure of the work. 

Cleville appears to be using 'dramaturgy' to mean a 'mode of thinking about the production': the emphasis on structure suggests an overview of Plan B. This is echoed in Mike Chao's answer, which describes his magic show's narrative.

For my show, its not about the technique of my hands , the "green objects" in my act, is just like a kind of magic power, they give me energy to do something incredible just like magic.

So, in the end of the routine, the greens change to white, just like I lost my power, and the show is done.

Tim Crouch elaborates on his appreciation of dramaturgy by noting that when he makes a piece, he considers it in a performance context from the start: the stage is part of his thinking even as he puts words on the page. Like Gary McNair, Crouch frequently performs his own scripts (An Oak Tree, which he bought back to the Fringe in 2015 features him alongside a different actor every evening), and the easy dividing line between playwright and performer is challenged. Within their dramaturgical process, then, the actual physical performance is considered alongside the text. 

It is possibly these responses, which betray a suspicion of dramaturgy as a concept but provide a precise awareness of its use, that encouraged Vile's later subdivision of questions with more emphasis on the audience response in relation to the performers' intentions. 

Yet within this limited sample, two ideas come across very clearly: dramaturgy is concerned with the structure of a performance, and that it concerns the response of an audience to a show. Only Cleville considers it as an engagement with characterisation and subtexts - both of which are concerned with the internal world of the performance, even though they are key to the communication with the audience. 

The Dramaturgy Database: Analysis Part 1, The Choices

Rather than attempt to grapple with wider themes, this essay takes ten entries to the database. They have been selected from various points in the process.

An Interview with Purple Penguin
One of the earliest entries, it is an interview with Kat Woods, writer and director of Belfast Boy. There are a selection of questions that relate directly to the production, which the company were bringing to Edinburgh Fringe 2015, and some that discuss dramaturgy within Wood's approach.

An Interview with Mike Chao
Chao is a magician, and this is an example of Vile's habit of engaging artists who would not usually consider dramaturgy: Chao's reply to the final question ('maybe?) hints at the confusion caused by Vile's line of questioning.

An Interview with Angry Puffin
A more recent piece, it lacks any individual name as an attribution for the answers, suggesting that the two actors mentioned in the introduction are working together on the replies. The company are based in Glasgow.

An Interview with Tim Crouch
Another piece from the Fringe, 2015: parts of this interview were later used in a preview article for The List.

An Interview with Ciaran Myers
Myers was the playwright for Touch, a production at the Edinburgh Fringe 2015. Again, this features questions about the production and more general discussion of the role of dramaturgy.

An Interview with Laura Ingram
Another playwright from the 2015 Fringe. This particular piece is one of the most read articles on The Vile Blog, and the first of the Dramaturgy Database articles to reach 300 views within a month.

An Interview with James Beagon
A recent post with the director of an updating of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. This company are based in Edinburgh.

An Interview with Joan Cleville
A relatively rare example of a choreographer within the database, the choreographer of Plan B spoke about his piece ahead of the 2015 Fringe.

An Interview with Gary McNair
From the pantomime season, Vile talks to writer and performer McNair about his script for the 'adult pantomime' at Glasgow's Oran Mor.

Although these choices do not represent the database in any sense - none of the interviews could be seen as typical, they do give a vague sense of the range of artists who have given their time to answer questions. All of these interviews were conducted via email.

The Dramaturgy Database: Introduction to some Analysis

Published from June 2015 to date, the dramaturgy database is a strand within The Vile Blog, an archive of work from The List's Theatre Editor and Glasgow University PhD student, Gareth K Vile. Consisting of over six hundred entries, and ranging across a variety of performance forms, it offers the complete text of email interviews conducted by Vile with performers, directors, choreographers and, more occasionally, other members of the performance communities, such as PR agents.

A quick survey of the database reveals that many of the contributors were presenting work during the Edinburgh Fringe, 2015, although entries after October 2015 tend to feature artists who are presenting work within Scotland or London. The majority of entries come from the directors of theatre. 

The database retains a focus on the discussion of 'dramaturgy'. Vile's own defintion of dramaturgy remains loose: at various times, he refers to it as 'the process of making performance', while recognising that this open-ended definition allows plenty of interpretation. Indeed, in a recent post on the blog (but not part of the database), he identifies, without much argument, a sense of dramaturgy in the self-portraits of Claude Cahun.

Each post within the database shares a structure: a press release (or other artist generated text) introduces the work and maker in question. There is a title that always includes the word dramaturgy, and makes a half-hearted attempt to work this into a commentary on the piece's title. The main body of the article is a series of questions - generic and general - which do evolve as the database grows. 

Vile's own reasons for starting and continuing the database are not always clear. In the supporting documentation, he explains that it is 'part of his research' and that it hopes to show 'a working definition of dramaturgy'. But in the same post, he acknowledges that, by mixing it with his other, more eclectic posts and articles, he has made it difficult to access. 

However, it is quite clearly not, at this stage, an expression of Vile's academic writing, belonging more closely to the populist preview mode of writing and, as he claims, more useful as a piece of media to insert into social media as an advertisement for upcoming performances or, he hopefully adds, as a resource for other researchers. In terms of scale, it is an impressive project, that lacks direction. 

This huge number of entries make the database difficult to assess, although future studies, taking a statistical approach to the content, may yield an assessment of themes within the responses. 

This essay aims to use ten of the entries - chosen without any particular intentions - to explore some of the themes around the discussion of dramaturgy between Vile and a selection of artists. By close reading of the answers, a tentative evaluation of dramaturgy's place within the artists' performances might be traced.