peter eckersall - towards an expanded dramaturgical practice

theatre research international vol. 31 | no. 3 | pp283297C International Federation for Theatre Research 2006 Printed in the United Kingdom doi:10.1017/S0307883306002240

Towards an Expanded Dramaturgical Practice:A Report on The Dramaturgy and CulturalIntervention Project

peter eckersall

This essay is a report on the Dramaturgy and Cultural Intervention Project (Dramaturgies), a

forum for the investigation of issues in professional dramaturgical practice in Australia. It reviews

the textual orientation of historical theatre practice in Australia before describing a series of events

aiming to promote a wider and more culturally interactive understanding of dramaturgy. New forms of

dramaturgy arising in response to the post-dramatic turn in theatre are discussed as a basis for exploring

an expanded dramaturgical practice. Proposals for a politics of dramaturgy that revive theatre as a

forum for social critique conclude the essay. While specific to one set of theatre interventions, it is

intended that the proposals discussed herein have wider applications.

Dramaturgy is: a confluence of literary, spatial, kinaesthetic and technical practices,

worked and woven in the matrix of aesthetic and ideological forces.1

Since the 1960s, in every decade in Australia, the craft of dramaturgy seems to comeinto focus as a part of theatre practice calling for our attention and reassessment. In thisessay I will consider one set of investigations taking place over the last few years arisingfrom conversations among dramaturgs in Melbourne. I will locate this discussion in thecontext of Australian theatre practice, wherein the figure of the dramaturg as opposedto the work of dramaturgy done as a matter of course in theatre production experiencesa degree of ambivalence and misunderstanding. While scholarly authors have extensivelymapped dramaturgy as a dramatic and aesthetic discourse of theatre, others who practicedramaturgy have begun to write about their experiences of working on the floor.2 HereI focus more on the notion of a working and creatively interventionist dramaturgy,while also attempting to acknowledge and develop theoretical frames from which wecan engage critically in questions of artistic practice. The two aspects are interrelated;dramaturgy as a practice of theatre theory and theatre ecology allows for and in factinsists on extensive discourse and analysis. As Dramaturgies member Melanie Beddie

This essay is developed from my paper titled What is Dramaturgy? What is a Dramaturg?, Realtime,70 (December 2005January 2006), special dramaturgy supplement. (available at www.realtimearts.net,

Dramaturgy Now link, pdf download, p. 2). The supplement features writings on the project by the

Dramaturgies team and was published in Reatime and distributed widely among the Australian performance

community. It also available as a pdf file at www.realtimearts.net/ Dramaturgy Now link.

284 eckersall Towards an Expanded Dramaturgical Practice

writes, Dramaturgy can be thought of as the midwife between theory and practice. Itcan provide a process for bringing ideas into a concrete form.3

A reference point for the framing of our project was an essay written by EugenioBarba in which he describes dramaturgy as a weave:

The word text, before referring to a written or spoken, printed or manuscript text

meant a weaving together. In this sense, there is no performance without text. That

which concerns the text (the weave) of the performance can be defined as dramaturgy.4

Just as Barba asserts there is no performance without text (in a polysemic sense),discussions about contemporary theatre point to the fact that there is no text withoutperformance. Thus, for Barba, dramaturgy is everything that has action or effect; notonly text and actors but also sounds, lights, changes in the space and so on. Actions in thetheatre come into play only when they weave together, when they become [performance]text.5

It is important to note that the weave not only is the creative combination oftheatrical elements, but also expresses an attitude or belief system about the contextsurrounding theatres production and reception. Barba, for example, explores thepolitical dimensions of the dramaturgical weave in comments about art as a state ofrefusal and disorientation:

Artistic discipline is a way of refusal. Technique in theatre and the attitude that it

presupposes is a continual exercise in revolt, above all against oneself, against ones

own ideas, ones own resolutions and plans, against the comforting assurances of ones

own intelligence, knowledge and sensibility.6

Dramaturgical processes might productively be rethought through this framework.To realize the potential of theatre, dramaturgical states can point to acts of creativeenunciation but also moments of strategic refusal. In Barbas terms, this means workingtowards a refusal of singular experiences and grasping a dramaturgy of changing stateswhen the entirety of what we show manages to evoke something different.7 Taking thisidea further, it is productive to think about dramaturgy as a process of being undecidedand, by virtue of the fact of creative indecision, of being in a relational state of intercession.I am not suggesting that we adopt a strategy of wilful confusion or obscurity in theatre asa way of discovering a political voice. We should not be trying to keep alive the collapseof representation in the avant-garde notion of performance as ecstatic chaos, rather toremind ourselves that theatrical representation is dramaturgically gestic; our processis about structural critique, not structural disorganization. Dramaturgy is subversivein that it is a process that reflects on theatre production from the perspective of theproduction, while simultaneously being that aspect of the process that keeps an openview. In this sense, the dramaturgy we are exploring is a somewhat Brechtian mode oftheatre-making and is conditioned by a relational manoeuvre: intimacy intermingledwith alterity. It is a memory of possibilities, of traces of creative processes that arise andare potential. While dramaturgs must work in response to the demands of production,we may be able to explore a creative tension with those same production systems. The

eckersall Towards an Expanded Dramaturgical Practice 285

question we might ask ourselves is how dramaturgy can offer the sense of refusal andresistance to closure and help make a theatre of changing states.

The Dramaturgy and Cultural Intervention Project

The Dramaturgy and Cultural Intervention Project (Dramaturgies) devised by MelanieBeddie, Paul Monaghan and myself 8 is a continuing investigation that aims to generatediscussions and workshop activities that focus on issues of professional dramaturgicalpractice. The scope of Dramaturgies includes our practice as dramaturgs, discussions andresearch symposia, publishing and teaching, and the Dramaturgies projects, discussedbelow.

The principal aims of Dramaturgies are twofold: to explore the wider contextsand possibilities of dramaturgy as a facet of theatre production that can intervene inand transform aspects of contemporary theatre practice, and to promote socially awaremodels of dramaturgical practice in the context of real-world professional productionsystems. Dramaturgies creates contexts for debating and challenging contemporarytheatre culture while also finding ways that the work of dramaturgs can become integralto systems of theatre production in a period of neo-liberal capitalist domination. As thename of the project suggests, a model of dramaturgical practice that investigates theatreboth as a cultural system and as an aesthetic one strongly informs our perspective. Wesee our work in developing these forums for dramaturgical research as an aspect ofour work as dramaturgs. Our intention is to grow the capacity in Australian theatrefor discussion and intervention, and to foster a greater sense of diversity, so to expandpolitical and aesthetic dimensions of theatre as interrelated aspects of contemporarycultural production. Dramaturgy in this sense is seen as a tool to challenge culturalnorms and established systems of production while also aiding in their realization andfurther development. In the present time, when the theatre in Australia has become risk-averse and conservative in both programming and aesthetic terms, it is the front-endexperimental processes of theatre-making that become invisible and the possibilities foralternative forms to emerge, not to mention for attracting new audiences, consequentlydiminish. Dramaturgies therefore aims to revisit and open wider aspects of process andform, ones that have become subsumed by a conservative theatre culture and a radicallyreduced funding environment. It is a strategic and focused attempt to create space in anoverburdened system of cultural production.

Indeed, many theatre cultures now experience creative challenges in respect ofreduced funding, fewer opportunities for the development of new work and politicalinterference, if not outright censorship of the arts. By working in the background with afocus on process rather than performance which is also where the work of dramaturgsbelongs we aim to explore functional and realistic ways to resist and reverse this trendand to open channels for a range of innovative theatrical productions to flourish.

The rise and plateau of Australian drama(turgy) and the new field of practice

A number of factors in the recent history of Australian theatre inform the Dramaturgiesproject and a brief discussion of the rise of Australian theatre as a discrete genre is


therefore relevant. One consideration is the manner by which the new-wave drama thatestablished an Australian theatre developed predominately as a play-production system.Although experiments in various kinds of alternative performance developed from theformative decade of contemporary Australian theatre spanning the late 1960s to the late1970s, the rise of Australian drama through a generation of self-consciously Australianwriters, directors, actors and designers has been most influential on the developmentof the Australian theatre scene.9 Growing from the new wave and supporting theproduction capacities of city-based theatre companies10 is a raft of play-developmentorganizations. Two key organizations are the Australian National Playwrights Centre(ANPC), which promotes the craft of playwriting and organizes an annual nationalplaywrights conference where new scripts are workshopped and given dramaturgicalsupport, and Interplay, a dramaturgical creative development organization workingwith young and emerging playwrights.11

A further aspect of Australian theatres development is postcolonial. Like otherformer British colonies, the Australian theatre has historically grown with a sense ofanxiety about speech and language. The colonial stain that measures literary outputand spoken drama against the historical centre of cultural empire is often referred to inAustralian as a cultural cringe. While popular culture and social trends in Australia arenow more influenced by the United States than Britain, the contests over language informative debates about national theatre and the later corrective among playwrightsfrom indigenous and non-Anglo immigrant backgrounds have largely determinedtheatres directions. Australian theatre as Australian drama that speaks to a self-consciousdiscovery of Australian languages is a powerful mindset in the thinking of our theatres.While major achievements in Australian drama have been noted in Australian theatrestudies, my point is not concerned with the nature of these plays.12 Rather, the issue hereis the way that dramaturgs have been incorporated as literary specialists into a theatrehistory and culture that has foremost been concerned with language and writing.

While European and especially Germanic styles of performance dramaturgy haveevolved in Australia since the 1970s in an ad hoc manner always associated withunderground theatre and what is called the independent or small-to-medium companysector dominant practices in the state theatre company sector have strengthened themodel of the dramaturg as literary specialist. Until very recent times, mainstream theatreshave tended to employ dramaturgs as literary managers whose work became consumedby the task of responding to vast amounts of unsolicited manuscripts. Built into thecharters of state-subsidized theatres are principals of access and equality. In theory,anyone can send their play, which, again in theory, can expect expert consideration bythe house dramaturg. Thus dramaturgs as literary managers have borne the brunt ofsuch progressive, but significantly underfunded, aspects of company life.13 And althoughone might argue that a literary manager is not a dramaturg, and that the two roles havediscrete and clear demarcations, the argument is tautologous in this context where peopledoing the work of literary managers have been called dramaturgs. Dramaturgy, lackinga wider professional profile in Australia, has to a degree become associated with theseposts the only ones that have offered dramaturgs continuing employment.


Further, as already noted, the need to produce new Australian plays has beeninstitutionalized in mainstream theatre culture. As a result, production systems thatrevolve around three- and four-week rehearsal periods often struggle with the structuralissues that arise in attempting to realize a newly written work. A kind of industrialdramaturgy focusing on fixing the problem at hand has arisen as result. In this guise,some dramaturgs become known for their capacities as script doctors. The problemhere is not with the expertise, rather it is with the institutional economic framing of thedramaturg as the fixer, as if this dramaturgical role is the singular function justifying adramaturgs employment. In a situation of scare funding and commercial pressure, thedanger is that the dramaturgs role is reduced to a commodity value that measures theirsuccess in terms of industrial output.

From the brief view of history, we see that Australian theatre has tended towardsfacilitating the literary dimensions of dramaturgical practice. This has given rise tovarious economic and cultural considerations and expectations that have limited thescope of dramaturgical work.

At the same time, however, we also need to recognize that the field of production hassimultaneously expanded. Hence, alongside contesting its narrow literary formations,accounting for the growth of a diverse dramaturgical practice has been a furtherimportant consideration for Dramaturgies. Alongside the evident plateau of dramaticproduction in Australia, we have also seen the rising importance of new fields of practicein smaller-scale works and companies.

Signalled in Paul McGillicks overview of dramaturgy in Australia in the 1980s14 is thefact that both the specific industrial tasks and a general cultural awareness of dramaturgyhave increased. Since the 1980s Australian performance has evolved into complexand diverse systems: hybrid spaces, technical innovations, diverse company structures,alternative means of production, visual-media theatre, dance theatre, physical theatre,and so the categories proliferate.15 The contemporary and/or experimental theatre scenehas become more performance-oriented in response to technical, aesthetic and politicalcontests and greater diversity and participation. The rise of small-to-medium sizedproject-based companies often with singular characteristic performance styles anddistinctive production values best exemplifies this trend. Similar outcomes are seen inarts festivals (which have grown alongside the rise of new forms of performance) and inaspects of mainstream company production.16 The appearance of performance studiesand interest in investigating aspects of cultural theory in performance have generatedfurther complexities in the contemporary theatre scene. In summary, the contemporarytheatre environment is structurally complex, intermediated, fragmented, culturally richand information-rich. The rise of performance dramaturgy that is associated with workof these kinds has corresponded to a rising performativity and metatheatricality, relatingbroadly to what Hans-Thies Lehmann has identified as postdramatic theatre.17 Thishas created the need for creative specialists who keep track of the complicated flow ofideas, technologies and forms associated with such work. Professional dramaturgy hastherefore moved beyond literary modes of production into new fields of performance,dance and technical and production work.


We have also witnessed a rising sense of dramaturgical process as the consciousbasis or logic in performance-making. As Marianne Van Kerkhoven notes, Oneof the fundamental characteristics of what we today call new dramaturgy is . . . aprocess-orientated method of working; the meaning, the intensions, the form and thesubstance of a play arise during the working process.18 For Melbourne-based groupNot Yet Its Difficult (NYID), the notion of process as performance is a cornerstone oftheir approach, as NYIDs director David Pledger comments: The theatre company isthe dramaturgy.19 Thus the interaction of forms and ideas structurally shapes NYIDsperformance work and its meanings. These examples show how dramaturgy has becomethe foundation of contemporary theatre.

In this situation we now see a diversity of influences, some tending towardsdramaturgical work on plays and with playwrights and others tending towards workingon the floor and in research support for postmodern or devised contexts of theatre-making. At mainstream houses such as the MTC, STC and, most strikingly, theMalthouse theatre, dramaturgs are now beginning to work more broadly on developingprogramming and expanding the cultural dimensions of theatre as a whole. This trendwas pioneered in independent theatre companies in the 1980s and 1990s, companies suchas the Sydney Front, NYID and Open City, for example. The Malthouse model perhapsmore closely corresponds to a kind of dramaturgy associated with the GermanBelgianDutch systems that tend to have a cultural and ecological view of theatre production. TheMTC/STC model is more concerned with developing the talents of new playwrights, andoccasionally directors, and might be compared in these developmental wings to the RoyalCourt model of play development. Given the postcolonial context of Australian theatre,however, it is slightly reductive to think about European and/or American notions ofdramaturgy as being all-influential and/or mutually exclusive. In the world at large,companies as diverse as the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), Ex Machina and theWooster Group also demonstrate the fruits of a more intensive dramaturgy at work.Meanwhile, Australian dramaturgy is a combination of factors and is often strategicallypositioned to resist colonial forms of national cultural authority. Where it comes fromis probably less important than if it works.

To summarize this brief discussion of the contexts for Australian dramaturgicalpractices, we see a situation that is at one level positive and dynamic. Thus an evolvingtheatrical project with a degree of interest in dramaturgy among present-day theatre-makers is evident. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that there is a healthy systemof dramaturgy in Australian theatre. In the conservative political climate that flourishesthere is a marked intolerance for the arts and a strong anti-intellectualism within societyis encouraged. The MTC, perhaps Australias most populist state theatre, for example,launched their 2006 season with the up-beat slogan life without the dull bits.20 Thiseuphoric sentiment seems to reinforce a notion of theatre that is uncomplicated anduncritical of social or political events (even despite the evident complexities of theMTCs actual programme). Dramaturgy, as the most intellectual of creative practicesand one of the most critical, therefore suffers alongside other critical forms of artisticproduction. Dramaturgies aims to be one strategy for addressing this situation and forfurther advancing and supporting in productive ways a contemporary theatre practice


that can be more responsive to the need to address this sense of cultural politicaldisorder. The following report on aspects of the Dramaturgies project is offered as amodel for the ongoing development of theatre culture.

Optimistic, as well as critically constructive, functions for dramaturgy are suggested.As noted in my prefacing comments, dramaturgs work in a contested and contestingspace of creative production. History and innovation in the arts have transformedthe dramaturgical undertaking. Many dramaturgs argue that therein lies a sense offreedom, creative tension and re-engagement of theatre with the social world. This senseof productive confusion and diversity of practice is helpful in theorizing an expandeddramaturgical craft.

The Dramaturgies forums

Thus far, three Dramaturgies projects two symposia and one performance workshop have been held. The first, Dramaturgies: The Artist as Agent Provocateur and CulturalInterventionist, was a half-day public event held in partnership with the 2002 MelbourneInternational Arts Festival. Artistic director Robin Archer agreed to contract selectedartists from her festival programme to participate in the dramaturgy forum. Importantly,the invitations were framed as a commitment to the festival; we prepared briefing papersin the home language of the artists and requested that they respond. The line-up ofpanellists (and their performances featuring at the festival) were Federico Leon (writerand director, Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre El Nivel De Jack), David Pledger (writer anddirector, K), Scott Rankin (director, kNot @ HOME), Renato Cuocolo and RobertaBossetti (makers, Interior Sites Project) and Romeo Castellucci (writer and director,Genesi).

The long-held belief that art creates wide-ranging effects was a central point raisedin the forum. Yet among the contributions was also the idea of the artist as somebodywho is acted upon with the condition of everydayness informing how one imagines theirwork as a maker. Castellucci termed this accidental community an almost spontaneousagency to release a sense of vitality and danger in our lives. Here Castellucci seemsto argue for the place of everyday sensibilities in theatre by contrasting controversialand baroque images with ephemeral moments. For example, the germination ofbodies in his theatre (which, despite the controversy, are normalised as members ofCastelluccis family and community) are part of the everyday world. Cuocolo and Boscettidiscussed how dangerous theatre could be when artists responded to the environment not in any abstract sense but in the confrontational experience of staging a theatrepiece in their home and inviting the audience to stay overnight. Theatre shouldntrepeat politics but make politics, was how Cuocolo expressed his idea of theatre asa ripple effect or site of critical momentum for changes to the social fabric. Pledgerand Rankin, both makers of work that addresses politics directly and explicitly, likewisespoke of theatres ripple effects and concentric circles of consequence as a culturalagency that extends from a singular activity and enlivens and creates opportunities forsocial and cultural interactions. Rankins nKnot @ HOME, a public performance workmade in collaboration with homeless people, was described as a framework for political


actions art as a way of accessing power. Rankins methodology drew politicians andpolicymakers into the mechanics of his production. The work was designed as a fulcrumaround which various levels of political negotiation might be instigated. Pledgers workK, as a strong condemnation of modes of corporate surveillance and social control, wasthe basis for identifying the political nature of his practice. For Pledger, as noted above,the elements of making theatre his collaborators, his understanding of the world andhis uses of literature and popular culture shape the outcomes of production as a whole.Ks world of hyper-Foucault-like surveillance was literalized in the theatre space as thecombination of live bodies and their video images fought for our attention.21 Meanwhile,Leon discussed the importance of crossing borders and how theatre is made as a contractof negotiated effect between the stage and audience. In a world of borders and constraints,interventions through the community of theatre might cross the boundaries imposedon the world: an idea of interaction as intervention.22

Panellists reported how rare and rewarding was the opportunity of speaking withother artists in the festival. This is a significant comment given that one of our mostcommonplace premises is that dramaturgical practice works as a conversation amongartists. Production schedules and commercial pressures now work to curtail theseexchanges. For example, many public discussions with artists in the festival contextare formularized as promotional activities in the guise of artist talks. As theatre systemshave been observed to become evermore globalized and homogenized, the need to createand facilitate spaces for dialogue and critical reflection increases in importance. This isa new and productive area for dramaturgs to work on.

The second forum, in February 2003, was a two-day symposium focusing ondramaturgy and professional practice. The forum parameters were broadly set in atalk that explored dramaturgy as a process of intermediation and creative interference.Panels were organized around the themes of performance dramaturgy, text, design anddramaturgy as curatorial practice. Each panellist presented case studies alongside widerdiscussions extending dramaturgical work and its relationship with arts and society.One session showed documentation of rare and/or paradigm-shifting moments fromperformance history. For the final panel, artistic directors and staff from major artsorganizations were invited to respond to the project themes as a whole.

RealTime arts journal editors Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter attended this forumas reporters. The following selected viewpoints casting light on the diverse productioncapacities of dramaturgy have been garnered from their report:

Eckersall made clear the complex position of the dramaturge as being involved in the

creative process but also as critical observer; our work touches so many areas of the

production process, we do so in an atmosphere of not really knowing our function, thus

leading to a kind of ambivalence that surrounds dramaturgical practice. . . . Eckersall

celebrated the significance of the new poetics of dramaturgy concerned with fractures,

disorientation and flows and in which making theatre is a collective dramaturgy. . . . In

the session on dramaturgy and devised performance, where collectivity often rules,

Maude Davey (Vitalstatistix) declared that because dramaturges are not responsible

they can be quite radical in their suggestions. . . . For Bruce Gladwin (Back to Back


Theatre) the key to dramaturgy is collective continuity of collaboration. . . . Paul

Monaghan took up Barbas weave . . . like a multi-track sound recording. . . . Rachael

Swain (Stalker, Marrugeku Company) brought into play a stage prior to the usual

notion of [the] creative starting point: For Stalker and Marrugeku, dramaturgy is

about the process of negotiation with Indigenous people who do not readily give out

their knowledge.. . .

It had been frequently proposed throughout the conference that in creating a work

everyone involved plays a dramaturgical role. However, in the session on Dramaturgy,

Space, Visuality, Sound, and Technology Paul Jackson said the important thing, in his

case, is to ask, How can you have a conversation with a lighting designer?. . . Rather than

seeing lighting as a history of technology, Jackson argued for it as a history of design,

of creating narrative with light and shadow, of space reacting to bodies, of how we

want space to move.. . . Designer Kathryn Sproul whose projects include working with

director Nigel Jamieson on the outdoor orchestral and performance spectacle Flamma

Flamma for the 1998 Adelaide Festival, described the designer as visual dramaturge,

a scenographer who writes the stage space creating a text, articulating one beyond

language.. . .

[Discussing her dramaturgical work in dance, Yoni Prior] said she was helping

[dancers] break out of choreostructures, integrating different processes, coming

up with new combinations of material and dealing with multi-tasking for modern

performers who are often in extreme states. . . . Playwright John Romeril . . . [said that

Dramaturgy] is research; a constant preoccupation with structure, a blow against anti-

intellectualism, and our Eurocentricity, legitimising what theatre can talk about. . . .

[In the curatorial panel] Alison Carroll [Asialink] described how modernism had

disappeared the curator, hiding the significance of their role, their years of training,

their personalities, presenting an illusion of non-mediation. . . . Kevin Murray [director

of Craft Victoria] concurred with Carroll, describing the prescriptive view that the

curator must not contaminate the data. He argued that the curators role should be

collaborative, playing witness to the work, providing the perspective with which to

see it, where to stand, how to move, just as a lot of painters use the stage frame

in their work. . . . In a final session . . . Aubrey Mellor [Playbox Theatre Company,

National Institute of Dramatic Art] . . . declared, For me, [dramaturgy] is now the

most important tool for the creation of an original Australian theatre. David Pledger

[NYID] took us back to the other side of the dramaturgical coin: . . . Essentially, the

dramaturgy is the operating system of the work for the company, and over a period of

time, that operating system accumulates so that you develop a repertoire, and a way of

working with a group of people.23

At least three general points can be concluded from this range of perspectives.The first relates to how theatre practitioners think consciously about dramaturgy intheir work. Many of the comments show a kind of structural connection a needto contaminate the data in various productive ways. This suggests a strong senseof theatricality, that structural elements and specialist tasks in theatre productionare increasingly visible, the work of artists in the plural evident in the staging of a


work. In a number of instances dramaturgical processes form the operating system oftheatre production and are the logic of performance. The second point is the degree towhich dramaturgy is understood as a state of intermediation, something that moves andnegotiates between the cultural and artistic dimensions and extremities of a production.Dramaturgy in this sense is intercultural and fluid. This has importance to developingtheatres social and political dimensions. Also relating to this is the third point, thatdramaturgys sense of ambiguity as a practice should be greatly valued. In this regard,the new poetics of dramaturgy, with its sensibilities of disorientation and flow, makesfor a productive site of cultural negotiation and contest.

Dramaturgies #3: from talking to making

The third project applied the theoretical discussion of dramaturgy to the context ofperformance-making: a model where dramaturgy can be experienced in the body aswell as the mind.24 Thirty-three participants, from a diversity of artistic professionaland cultural backgrounds, and heralding from every state and territory in Australia,participated in the project. A working theme of hope and dread framed the intellectualapproach of the project. This theme explores Australias contemporary social conditionfrom various perspectives of critique and possibility. It was prefigured in project materialsent to participants before their arrival. Each participant was asked to bring an object as aresponse to the thematic material. The workshop structures were designed to foregrounddiscussion about the politics of dramaturgy alongside structural questions designed toextend and expand the creative capacities of theatre-making. Four interrelating aspectsof the dramaturgical process were identified:

thematic exploring the theme of hope and dread through a range of intellectual,spatial, visual, sonic and personal dimensions;

aesthetic mediums of theatre foregrounding space, light, motion, text and sound; social through exercises and interventions, the project focused strongly on

dramaturgical practice as a process ineluctably inside, and responding to, the socialworld;

historical through exercises and interventions, highlighting histories and me-mories of theatre practice as integral aspects of the dramaturgical craft.

A number of all-group activities were held including an experiential tour, group warm-ups, talks and feedback sessions. Three intensive workshop groups were also establishedand given challenges to explore dramaturgical questions through studio practice. Theywere asked to produce workshop presentations in response to thematic interventionsand dramaturgical problems. The project concluded with presentations and appraisal ofthe work. An all-group discussion and feedback session with reports from each of thethree groups and an assessment of the project overall concluded the event.

The chief workshop components of Dramaturgies #3 were:

On the first evening, an experiential journey, a bus trip to key sites around innerMelbourne. The ambient exploration of place and space was referenced in visuallandmarks such as the futuristic privatized road of city link, dystopic oil refineries,


architectural monuments contrasting with everyday inner-suburban space, and,finally after being cooped up in the narrow confines of the bus a hike bytorchlight in the bush park alongside the Yarra River. Musical selections were playedat various times in this consciously experiential revisiting of avant-garde site-specifictheatre practice.

Group warm-ups. The memory bank of performance-making was explored thoughwarm-ups that drew on exercises and body memories of a history of contemporaryperformance-making in Australia.

Talks on the theme of hope and dread by academics, artists, progressive socialcommentators and religious figures.

Small group sessions, experiments with light and sound in nondescript workshopspaces, later moving to three distinct spaces: a medical dissection room, a nineteenth-century memorial hall, and a 1960s open space theatre. Each group was allocatedone space and were asked to factor responses to the unique space and designelements, alongside the brought objects and thematic material. A show-and-telland extensive discussion and evaluation followed.

As John Romeril notes in one of the participant reports:

In a word, Dramaturgies #3 had a strongly defined experiential emphasis. It insisted

we adopt a learn by doing and observing approach. The convenors set problems. The

participants sought to solve them on the floor, on their feet in practical performable

ways. I applaud this strategy, and a notable example is that each participant was asked

to bring along an object they felt related to the Dramaturgies #3 theme: Hope And

Dread. In my group as individuals displayed their chosen object, and explained what

lay behind the choice, a deep and meaningful show and tell session developed.25

To claim a space for experimental work as an unrestricted mode of research anddevelopment is significant to the projects aims and outcomes. In this regard, thenotion that dramaturgy is an accumulation of aspects of theatre culture is emphasized; itproposes a model of theatre working in cultural and artistic continuum. By contrast, inthe present time, theatre as a culture industry is fixed on the immediate and the new. Formany of the participants in Dramaturgies #3 who are established artists the space forless immediate critical and creative reflection is condensed. While it is self-evident thatthe theatre community as a whole has enormous production expertise and has developedindustrial dramaturgical practices to a high level of professionalism, the wider brief ofdramaturgy to range across theatrical practice and agitate in the critical and artistic gapsof production is much less considered. As noted above, not only is this a problem fordramaturgs, who find that the contexts of their work have narrowed, but it also bodesill for theatre-making as a whole. As the range of options for dramaturgs is reduced,so too are the possibilities for artistic production. In this way Dramaturgies offers amode of experimental dramaturgical practice that in some senses revisits dramaturgicalfundamentals while also aiming to substantially rethink and reinvent dramaturgical craft.

As the director Peter Hammond noted, It is very seldom, if ever, that directors andother artists actually get the time to sit down together to discuss methods, meanings,


non-meanings and chew the cud.26 Interdisciplinary conversations about theatreprocesses and cultural ideas are a significant aspect of dramaturgical practice. Yet thecapacities for critical refection and exchange of information in workshop environmentsseem to be have been reduced, along with the space for experimentation. In fact,the two dimensions of creativity are complementary. A common comment amongparticipants was that the structures, times and places that artists have for such creativedialogue have reduced. While information flows have increased expediently, these areoften structured and restrained by their modes of dissemination and influenced byan instrumental function. Dramaturgies explores the opposite effect, and makes aspace where conversation is a function of dramaturgy. One of the achievements ofthe Dramaturgies project was the degree to which participants were reminded of thecreative importance of dialogue and commented on its value.

Towards a politics of/as dramaturgy

The tone was set for a politics of dramaturgy to be debated in the first Dramaturgiesforum. In comments that fundamentally influenced the directions of the second andthird Dramaturgies projects, John Romeril outlined a sense of crisis in theatre requiringa rethinking of the relationships between politics and theatrical forms:

I live today in an age in which words represent an incredibly corrupt medium. The

feeling I have is that we are living in an age of liars, where what is spoken is almost

inherently untrustworthy. In those circumstances, I suggest that the theatrical response

to go into dream state, to go into physicality, to go into visuality, is to maybe ask an

audience to make sense in areas of their own sensibility that have not been invaded by

the general corruption to which language in our time is being subject.27

Romeril is referring to recent international events, including the bold lies ofAmerican, British and Australian politicians used to leverage their justifications for thewar on Iraq. Local issues such as the conservative Australian prime ministers expedientmisuse of images of refugees in the so-called children overboard affair and race-basedelection campaign in 200128 are also suggested in Romerils articulation of an age ofliars. The question posed is how theatre, a fictional and symbolic form of representationand vehicle of public debate, can work effectively when its tools of dramatizationhave been taken over for such disreputable ends. Romeril suggest the answer lies inadopting an overtly hybrid theatricality and conspicuously inviting a sense of dialogueand engagement with the audience that requires their overt participation in the makingof theatre.

Our response to this was to initiate forums and workshops that explore thediversity and hybrid practices of dramaturgy. The diversity of the field, for example,was articulated in the programming of Dramaturgies #2, a forum that highlightedand debated contrasting and diverse dramaturgical practices. Moreover, in devisinga workshop model for Dramaturgies #3, we aimed not only to explore the differentapproaches to dramaturgy, but to consider how they might work as a hybrid entity.Diverse dramaturgical processes became the basis of developing material for performance


and the connection between these process and politics as defined by the contexts andthemes of the work was stressed. People brought their dramaturgy to a collectivespace that was also marked by a sense of context and framing. In this way the dialoguebetween forms and processes of theatre and ideology and politics were highlighted andstrengthened.

More philosophically, by provoking and activating a dramaturgical model thatis diversely informed by wider artistic communities, we aimed to develop a politicsof dramaturgy that is visibly about the arts connecting with the social world. We seedramaturgy as a creative problematic and a form of grit in the theatrical process. In thisrespect the uncomfortable relationship that dramaturgy has in the theatrical process,and the discomfort sometimes experienced by dramaturgs as their role is questioned,might be seen as productive, if not a measure of the dramaturgical process as a whole; inother words, a dramaturgy of changing states and transformation might be explored.Theatre systems understand the qualities of intimacy very well; our workplace is largelycooperative, and the nature of theatre work permits and requires closeness, a sharingof vulnerable states, and so on. But, as we have seen, theatre is also a condition ofalterity. The exploration of this state offers us much in the way of realizing and growinga vigorous and relevant art form. Dramaturgy commingles intimacy and alterity; thework of dramaturgs is between these states in the same moment.

The Dramaturgy and Cultural Intervention Project aims to discover how artsproduction can extend beyond singular events and activities and contemplate an artisticlife that is yet to be realized. Dramaturgy is a process that might describe this transactionand this possibility. Fresh in the mind is the possibility of dramaturgy as a mode ofresistance and a way of refusal. Dramaturgies considers how dramaturgy works forcreative and enduring resistance.

notes

1 Peter Eckersall, Melanie Beddie and Paul Monaghan, The Dramaturgies Project, Realtime, 70

(December 2005January 2006), special dramaturgy supplement (www.realtimearts.net, Dramaturgy

Now link, pdf download, p. 1).

2 Two texts illustrating the broad scope of writing and ranging from the theoretical to more practically

informed work are Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Juers-Munby (London

and New York: Routledge, 2006) and the On Dramaturgy issue of Theaterschrift, 56 (1994), edited by

Marijke Hoogenboom and featuring collected essays and interviews with professional dramaturgs.

3 Melanie Beddie, So What Is this Thing Called the Dramaturg? Realtime, 70 (December 2005January

2006), special dramaturgy supplement. (www.realtimearts.net, Dramaturgy Now link, pdf download,

p. 4).

4 Eugenio Barba, The Nature of Dramaturgy, New Theatre Quarterly, 1 (1985), pp. 7578, here p. 75.

5 Ibid., p. 76.

6 Eugenio Barba, The Deep Order Called turbulence, The Drama Review, 44 (2000), pp. 5666,

here p. 56.

7 Ibid., p. 60.

8 I acknowledge the work of my artistic collaborators in the Dramaturgies project, Melanie Beddie and

Paul Monaghan. Dramaturgies has received financial support from Australian cultural agencies

including the Australia Council and Arts Victoria. Additional in-kind support was received from the

School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne. The three collaborators are professional dramaturgs.


Beddie and Monaghan also work as theatre directors. Eckersall is the resident dramaturg for the Not

Yet Its Difficult performance group. Eckersall and Monaghan are theatre studies academics at the

University of Melbourne.

9 For further information on the rise of Australian drama see Peter Fitzpatrick, After the Doll: Australian

Drama since 1955 (Melbourne: Edward Arnold, 1979); and Leonard Radic, The State of Play: The

Revolution in the Australian Theatre since the 1960s (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1991). For a

discussion of more recent theatre see Veronica Kelly, ed., Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s

(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998).

10 For example, the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC, founded as the Union Repertory Company in

1953) the Sydney Theatre Company (STC, founded 1978) and smaller atelier-style public theatres such

as Playbox (now called the Malthouse) and Belvoir Street.

11 For further information on the ANPC see www.anpc.org.au and Interplay at www.interplayaus.com.au.

Other organizations promoting script development include Playworks, offering dramaturgical

assistance for womens writing, and the Australian Script Centre, which collects and archives

unpublished play scripts.

12 Julian Meyrick has pointed out that new play production in Australia has significantly declined. His

recent essay assessing the heath of the Australian repertoire includes statistics showing a significant

decline in the number of new Australian works at state theatres, from forty-nine premieres in 1986 to

29.8 in 2003. See Julian Meyrick, Trapped by the Past: Why Our Theatre is Facing Paralysis, Platform

Papers, 3 (2005), p. 14.

13 For example, Peter Matheson, who worked as the literary advisor/dramaturg at the Melbourne Theatre

Company for many years, has made this point in a number of forums, most recently at the

Dramaturgies #3 event.

14 Paul McGillick, Drama what? Dramaturg!, New Theatre Australia, MarchApril 1989.

15 For example, see Keith Gallash and Virginia Baxter, eds., In Repertoire: A Guide to Australian

Contemporary Performance (Sydney: Australia Council and RealTime, 2001). Genres included in this

publication are circus, physical theatre, outdoor, multimedia, site-specific and performance.

16 This is demonstrated in a variety of ways at major companies. Examples include inviting controversial

directors to direct edgy experimental repertoire on main stages, the development of research and

experimental departments such as Blueprints at the STC, and the fact that actors and technical staff

regularly move between mainstream and experimental projects, taking with them the experience of

both.

17 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre.

18 Marianne Van Kerkhoven, On Dramaturgy, Theaterschrift, 56 (1994), pp. 834, here p. 18.

19 David Pledger, cited in Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter, Dramaturgy Now: Dramaturgies II:

Working the Weave, Dramaturgies Now (www.realtimearts.net), 2003, online essay. See also David

Pledger and Rosemary Klich, Interview: Eavesdrop and New Media, Performance Paradigm, 1

(www.performanceparadigm.net), 2005, online essay.

20 See http://www.mtc.com.au/ABOUT.aspx?menuID=1&contentID=43 (artistic director SimonPhillipss Mission Statement).

21 For further analysis of NYIDs K see Peter Eckersall, Surveillance Aesthetics and Theatre against

Empire, Double Dialogues, 4 (www.doubledialogues.com), 2003 online essay.

22 Transcripts of the Dramaturgies forums were edited and published on the Dramaturgy Now website, in

partnership with the contemporary performance and media publication RealTime. See Dramaturgies

Now (www.realtimearts.net), 2003, online essay.

23 Edited text from Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter, Dramaturgy Now: Dramaturgies II: Working the

Weave, Dramaturgies Now (www.realtimearts.net), 2003, online essay.

24 Peter Eckersall, Melanie Beddie and Paul Monaghan, Dramaturgies #3 application to the Australia

Council, 2002.

25 John Romeril, Dramaturgies #3, annotators report, 2004.

26 Peter Hammond, Dramaturgies #3, participant feedback, 2004.


27 Cited in Peter Eckersall, Melanie Beddie and Paul Monaghan, The Dramaturgies Project, Realtime, 70

(December 2005January 2006), special dramaturgy supplement (www.realtimearts.net, Dramaturgy

Now link, pdf download, p. 1). See also transcripts of Dramaturgies 1 (www.realtimearts.net,

Dramaturgy Now link).

28 For complex and compelling analysis see David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory (Crows

Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2003).

peter eckersall is senior lecturer and coordinator of theatre studies at the University of Melbourne. He is

a specialist in contemporary Japanese theatre. He is author of Theorizing the Angura Space: Avant-garde

Performance and Politics in Japan, 19602000 (Brill 2006) and co-editor of the journal Performance

Paradigm. He has worked in theatre for more than twenty years as an actor, director and dramaturg. He was

cofounder of the performance art group the Men Who Knew Too Much and is a founding member and resident

dramaturg for Not Yet Its Difficult. He is a co-convenor of the Dramaturgies project.

peter eckersall - towards an expanded dramaturgical practice

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