Friday, October 15, 2021
The Dramaturg’s Perspective: A Conversation with Amauta Firmino
The Brooklyn Rail: Dramaturgical labor is so expansive in scope that defining it is a fool’s task. Any definition is sure to miss some aspect of a dramaturg’s varying contributions to a production. The last time you saw a play, did the joke land right? Probably the work of a dramaturg. Were the costumes believable? Probably the work of a dramaturg.
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I think it's great that this article was an option to read. Dramaturgy was something I didn’t even learn about until this year when I came to Carnegie Mellon. So many high schools are just not sophisticated or professional enough to have a dramaturg, so it is something that isn’t as accessible, seeing that many people start a theatre in grade school. But this article helped me get a greater insight into why a dramaturg is so necessary. Nothing is without context, especially theatre so it is vital that all aspects of that context are analyzed. What most struck me about what Firmino said was that everyone within the show should be doing some sort of dramaturg work, it can’t be all left to one person. The actors and designers should also be doing their own work in the context of a piece of theatre. Finally, it was also interesting to see him talk about Slave Play specifically and the journey it has gone on from Yale to Broadway.
I love dramaturgy. I think that it is something that often goes unnoticed and unappreciated in the theatre industry both by the audience and the cast/crew of a show. My high school was lucky enough to have a dramaturg, his name was George Hegarty, he was also the AP Lit teacher and he taught my director when she was in high school so their relationship was very good. Some time at the beginning of the rehearsal process everyone would be called to a dramaturgy session with Heg and it would basically be a lecture about the show, its history, its references, etc. This is especially important in shows like She Kills Monsters, for example, a show I worked on my junior year. Not only did Heg have to explain all of the 90s references to a bunch of kids that weren’t even born yet but he also dove well into the world of Dungeons and Dragons so that we would be able to put on a show that was true to its character. One of the fun things he decided to do with this show had the party play a one-shot round of D&D as their character that way they could understand not only the game but how their character interacts with the world. This ties in with how the article states everyone a part of a show should be doing a little of their own dramaturgy work. I feel incredibly lucky to have had exposure to dramaturgy and I am even more grateful that CMU focuses so much on it. Dramaturgy work makes shows come to life. Without context, the world would be dull.
People often ask me--what do people study within the School of Drama? I just list them off and tell them, there are musical theatre, acting, design and production, directing, and dramaturgy majors. The discipline that people have the most questions about is dramaturgy--’What’s a dramaturgy?’ As someone who is not a dramaturg, I might have a vague understanding of what they do, but having never worked with one myself, I can’t point towards specific examples, nor do I have a definition that I can easily share. This piece outlines the expansive scope of what a dramaturg does, including structuring the play itself, historical accuracy, and societal implications of various parts of the script. This is specifically a conversation with Amauta Firmino, the dramaturg for Slave Play. There are three interracial couples in the show, and the couples undergo couples therapy that examines the racial power dynamics within each relationship--master and slave. Not only did Firmino do the research necessary for writing such a play, he and other creatives involved in Slave Play drew on their own life experiences to write in the complex navigation of the in-betweens of race. This interview highlights the importance of dramaturgy, but also the importance and value of representation within dramaturgy as an industry.
I’m curious how long dramaturge have been around. Now that I think about it, how long has the traditional power structure that we use in theatre been around, how has it evolved, my guess is it’s moved and continues to move towards more specialization as the field creates not only new roles, video and media being one, and becomes more in depth. I found especially interesting this discussion on what dramaturgical work is and that some of it is necessary to be done by the other people working on the play. In highschool we established a dramaturgy crew in my junior year and struggled to find them a place because a lot of the research was being done very lightly and often started before the dramaturg crew started just by how are schedule worked, a schedule that was not the most conducive. Like it referenced in the article, without the proper support you lose a valuable role.
I had NO idea what dramaturgy was until I came into Carnegie Mellon. At my high school, the “dramaturgs” for the fall play were essentially assigned the script and asked to write a small article for the program about the larger context of the play in whatever form they chose. The “dramaturgs” for our theatre club had no part in the rehearsal process or direction, not to mention any facets of production. I think that dramaturgy is really important now that I know exactly what it is. There have been many times in my career as a high school costume designer that I thought the concepts introduced by the director may have been anything from surface level to downright tone-deaf. The work of a dramaturg to make a piece of art add to the outside discourse reminds me of the work that I’m doing in interpretation and argument to create research papers. Art and writing add to the wider cultural conversation no matter what they aim to accomplish, so having a dramaturg make that addition more nuanced and interesting is so important.
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