Exeunt Magazine: Shall we get the D-word out of the way…? Surely one of the biggest artistic differences in the way we approach theatre is whether we work with dramaturgs as intrinsic to the full creative process – programming, concept, realisation – or as someone to give a few script notes / deliver a research pack on day one. The importance of dramaturgs, on the whole, in Europe just feels wildly different.
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The role of director as “author” has never really occurred to me before reading this article. Europe has such a normalized tradition of upending classic texts and putting original interpretations on known works that this philosophy makes perfect sense. For an Americanized example, one could say that Ivo Van Hove took on the authorship of his West Side Story when he meddled with the original lore of the story and history of the show, but I feel like Broadway would riot if that title was taken away from Laurents, Bernstein & Sondheim.
The “Western” (for these purposes, the US and the UK) ideas still cling to Aristotle’s proclamation that text reigns above all in the hierarchy of theatrical elements, but the Europeans seem to hold the text of a play with much less reverence, seeing it as a starting point for a performance and something to be played with as a director envisions.
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