Adrea Bozic ‘On dramaturgy’ (2009).
“A dramaturg in my process is someone who is somewhat alien, who maintains his or her otherness and distance from the process in order to be able to ask the question about it. And it is also someone who makes a lot of drama, someone who asks questions about things that might otherwise slip by unnoticed or be taken for granted” (Bozic, 2009, 1).
“take original material from other sources: films (embodying the movement of the actors), my private life (moving my furniture into my installation), weather conditions (collaborating with the factor of its unpredictability and ‘givenness’). Then I set up ‘generators’ that process this material to produce new work. These generators are, in fact, dramaturgical structures, and their transparency in the work is as important as the material itself”(Bozic, 2009, 1).
“I set up certain dramaturgical structures (a generator), which might, for example, be based on a timeline of a certain emotion” (Bozic, 2009, 1).
“Once this generator is clear to all of us. we use it as an anchor to hold the rest of the elements together, a red thread that runs through the process and the performance and to which everyone can relate” (Bozic, 2009, 1).
“A good dramaturg for my process is someone who manages never to lose sight of this red thread” (Bozic, 2009, 1).
“…the thread that connects all the individual projects into one ongoing exploration” (Bozic, 2009, 1).
“I can use certain elements from my projects, as well as from other people’s projects, art history, politics, daily news, weather, my friend’s lives etc. in order to contextualize them differently in each new work I make” (Bozic, 2009, 2).
“They may include: a dramaturgy of one’s of life (how I fictionalize my own life to give it a grand narrative); a dramaturgy of community life (that makes visible the strategies of staging, fictionalizing and performing day-to-day life); a dramaturgy of virtual life (that makes visible the strategies of fictionalizing, staging and performing political and other events through the mass media of TV, film and the Internet)” (Bozic, 2009, 2).
“…attitudes that can help to make dramaturgies of real-life events transparent” (Bozic, 2009, 2).
“…not only is life a generator of art but art is a generator of life in a transparent way” (Bozic, 2009, 2).
My observations.
All dramaturgs that create work should always find a ‘red thread’ in order to make cohesive work, without it, they are lost.
Regardless of subject matter or format and given topic can be used to create work or, set up generators in which work can be conceived.
There is no downside to being a distant dramaturg as long as they maintain a vital presence in the creation of the developing work. A good dramaturg is someone who is always observing and asking the question, of why this is happening?
Using certain dramaturgical devices can allow work to flow more freely through its development.
Works Cited.
Bozic, A. (2009) On Dramaturgy. Performance Research, 14(3) 1-2.