Tracing the roots of dramaturgy can be a challenge when it has since become so entangled in various other forms. Discovering how it came to be what it is in the UK is also muddied by the socio-political background of the nation and its spending, and how this impacts the theatre industry as a whole. However, arriving back in the UK post-pandemic has made me see that more people are becoming more aware of what dramaturgy is, and more freelance theatre makers are adding the dramaturg moniker to their list of job titles.
When I set out to conceive the Developing Northern Dramaturgies project, I was trying to shake off the academic notion of dramaturgy and make something more relevant to the everyday working lives of theatre makers, particularly those working in minority languages.
There was a hope to find professionals that were as excited about the potential of dramaturgy as I was. However, it became clear to me that, in the British context at least, the practice of dramaturgy outwith the academic setting looked very different to how I had previously been researching it in Scotland and practicing it in Sweden. This makes sense: in the UK, freelance theatre artists have to be multi-faceted, they may come to playwriting or directing through the sheer necessity of creating work in which they can then perform. Having to be able to increase your opportunity to work by being flexible to the needs of the few projects that are forming around us. Needing to make a living in an industry that consistently reminds us of how little money it has.
The search for participants on this project meant that I had to pull from a multi-talented pool of theatre maker generalists whose experience of dramaturgy itself may have been a practice based more on instinct and creative skill/adaptability as opposed to specific training in the field. In many ways, this meant that I had to, in turn, strengthen my skills in communicating dramaturgy in a more accessible way and find new ways of approaching the discussions around it so as to not get caught up on threads of dramaturgy that were better suited for the academic lecture hall than the practical space of the theatre.
Through the core team’s discussions, with the rich perspectives of actors, producers, and writers, it became clear that there was the presence of a yet unanswerable question: “how would a minority language dramaturg learn the required skills without having to go through a majority language education in the field?”
In Sápmi, Giron Sámi Teáhter often rely on the skills and knowledge of Swedish directors as there hasn’t been the same opportunity for an established Sámi theatre culture to develop given the oppression and assimilation forced upon the communities by the state. In order to deliver high-quality professional theatre, they acknowledge the need to work with trained professionals who have the appropriate experience regardless of whether they have Sámi heritage or not. Likewise, a Gaelic writer in Scotland might have mentorship through the various schemes on offer here by an English-speaking playwright. On the one hand, the experience and knowledge of this mentor is key in the development of the early-career writer, but on the other hand, the mentorship comes from a perspective shaped by the majority culture and canon.
Given that writing and directing are much more established positions in the theatre making process, and that in an environment of scarce funding dramaturgs are one of the easiest positions to drop from a project that needs to save money, then the opportunity for minority cultures to develop a professionalised dramaturgical practice is vastly reduced. It became strikingly obvious that of course dramaturgical practice has been made within and around the majority culture: that’s where the knowledge currently lies. In the context of this project, it poses the challenge of first figuring out the roots of minority-language dramaturgy in its culture, and the appropriate route towards a dramaturgy of this kind.
I have previously written about subversive or radical forms of dramaturgy, from radicalising eco-dramaturgy to subversion of the everyday in closed-house environments. To write about them, I have realised, is more an activity that typically generates questions. And when it comes to sitting in a room of theatre makers, each with their own embodied habits of approaching theatre, sometimes simply asking questions isn’t enough. And yet, how can we practically begin to disentangle the roots and forthcoming routes of minority-language dramaturgy? To achieve this when we are also so caught up in the colonial hegemony of Western theatre practice can be challenge. Finding the space to imagine something new when we are embedded in the majority national culture requires an act of decolonisation that must begin in the everyday before it can be applied to the theatre. For a project as small as this one, perhaps it was too great an ambition to move beyond simply creating more questions.
However, if we are speaking of roots, then I hope, and I do believe, that this project has at least planted the seed of curiosity and dramaturgical thought which may, further down the line, create new roots and lead my collaborators down new routes to a disruptive and re-imagined dramaturgical practice.
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