 This year, back and harder than ever. Hi. Do you want me to get into this for a show? Okay, there's like a made a bunch of these, and I'm not a graphic designer, I'm a text guy, so the fact that it actually all is readable is a huge accomplishment for me. And I'm going to say there's also shapes and stuff, so you know, I use the template though, so some of you guys are going to say, there's too much white space or there's too little, I don't know, I'm sorry, just, it's baby steps, okay? So, this is an event that's sponsored by the University Caucus of LMDA. We've been doing it since 1992, was first found under Susan Jones when Anne Cannao was the president. And so LMDA was founded in 85, I think, so this is a long-standing tradition. I am very, very, very deeply honored to be able to be the guy who's presenting it to you. For those of you who don't know me, I should probably introduce myself. I'm Michael Chambers, I'm the director of graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz Theodoric's department. Yeah, Santa Cruz! Formerly I was the director of the, I was the founding director of the BFA program in production dramaturgy at Carnegie Mellon University. Yeah! Where's my Swissian you at? See you in here. Okay, great, awesome. So happy, yeah, so happy to see you guys. And then I wrote this book called Ghostlight, which is like, I don't know, people like it. So, I just, I want to show you that I just found out that it's being translated into Spanish. Yeah! By Ana Lova Santana. Yeah, it's fantastic. So, super excited about that. You can also read it in Korean. And Farsi. Okay, enough about that. I am, I can't tell you how honored I am and how happy I am because the people that I'm standing on the stage with, or who are sitting on the stage with me while I'm standing, are people, in some cases, whose work I've admired for many years has been very inspirational to me, but we are also bringing in some new faces, some new voices. We have a really wonderfully diverse group up here of people with different approaches to their work, to our work, all sort of conjoining together in this field that we call dramaturgy, which we refuse to define exactly what it is. This is why. So, without further ado, because enough of my yakin', the plan is that what we've done is we've invited these amazing people up here to talk about the hottest thing that they're working on right now, the thing that they're most passionate about, the thing that they know the most about, whatever it is, for five minutes. And five minutes exactly. And Levina over there is going to be keeping time, and she'll give them a two and a one. And then following that, I'm going to come on with a hook and bring it off. But we're really into high-five. So this is the tradition, and we respect it. Okay, and then hopefully, if I can shut up and get moving on this, we will have some time afterwards to answer questions. But really, what this is, is what Lessing called fermenta cojitatiasis, which is fermentation for thought, right? Food for thought. It's like making alcohol, right? For minting thought. And so the idea is that after you see this for the rest of the conference, you're going to be running up to people and going, oh my God, you said that thing, and I really want to know more about it. And here's my card, and here's, right? And please, can we collaborate on this cool idea that I've got, and I really want to learn more? That's the idea. So do that, because we are theater people at the end of the day, right? I mean, we're bookish, but we're theater people. And so that means two things. One is we didn't even have early. And the second thing is that we asked you, and the second thing is that we are great collaborators, right? And so that's what we do, right? Unlike the other scholars that I work with in other fields, excuse me, we're little collaborators. All right, so, I'm getting on with the thing. All right, our first speaker needs no introduction. I always wanted to do that. Our first speaker is the author of a book that's very important to me towards dramaturgical sensibility. Yes! Formerly a professor at Villanova, where I just did an external review. And currently, actually not currently anymore, but as of just a few days ago, and meritens of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where he has trained an entire generation of dramaturgs, former president of this organization, my mentor, my friend, Jeff Rowe. My mic check is not going to be on my top. Three, two, one. I'm going to quickly read to you as to 20 titles and then think a little bit with you about what they might have in common. Adapturgy, the dramaturg's art and theatrical adaptation. Shakespeare in three dimensions, the dramaturgia of Macbeth and Romeo Juliet. Physical dramaturgy, prospectus from the field. New media dramaturgy, performance media and new materialism. The practice of dramaturgy, working on actions and performance, dance dramaturgy, modes of agency, awareness, and engagement. Banda Neon, working with Pina Bausch. Adventures in feminist dramaturgy, the road less traveled. Staging the Spanish Golden Age, translation and performance. Essential dramaturgy, the mindset and skill set. The Humberg dramaturgy by G. E. Lessing. A new and complete annotated English translation. Dramaturgian motion of work on dance and movement performance. Mateshastra, English translation with critical notes. The Lambda online archive, which now has the review. Lambda conference materials from 87. Newsletters from 2012 and just now. Canadian newsletters from 1988 and on. A man of letters, the selected dramaturgical correspondence of Richard Claredo. The red-legged companion to dramaturgy. A theory of dramaturgy. Dramaturgian in making a user's guide for theater practitioners. New dramaturgy, international perspectives on theory and practice. Dramaturgian architecture, theater utopia, and the built environment. Quickly, what do they all have in common? Alan Geer. Alan Geer. Good, I'm not sure. What else? Dramaturgy. Dramaturgy, good. Collins, right? English. What? They're all recent. Yeah, they're all recent, right? They're all in the last five years. And finally, none of them appear at Lambda's online bibliography. It has, in fact, no entries at all after 2013, which is, I think, an all agreeing number. And we should no doubt have a word with whoever's responsible to lead their membership forever. At which point, I'm going to say that. At which point, I'm advantaged, okay, so. Or with Michael Chimbers, plus his head of university relations, we're not going to go in search of anyone who would like to work on updating this resource by taking a year from 2014 to the present, tracking down what's there, reading it, and then coming back maybe a year from now to have a brilliant conversation about where we are and where we need to go as a field. At the same time, and for similar reasons, we need to update the Lambda chronology, a timeline that notes events we should not, as a community, forget, such as where was the last conference and who organized it. A chronicle that will, in addition to serving future grant writers and yet unborn historians, simplify late night, semi-indemniated, inebriated conversations at the conference bar. So with Martin and Brian's blessing, we're looking for individuals to take one of the past five years in the life of LMDA and bring it up today. Documents like these, however mundane, are foundational to the ways in which we dramaturg ourselves. They are critical to our ability to have informed conversations about where we have been and where we are going as a discipline. These texts remind us of the breadth and depth of the histories we share. They return us to conversations about what constitutes a text, about the distinctions we make between translations and adaptations between primary and what we might think of secondary, and perhaps most fundamentally, quoting from James' book, how stories evolve and mutate to new times in different places. Dance dramaturgy, dramaturgy in motion, working with Pina Bausch and in particular physical dramaturgy, ask us to consider the relationship between dramaturgy in various forms of embodiment. For example, do we learn about ourselves when we do or do not put the word physical in front of the word dramaturgy? Is the body saying to us, I'm in some way more fundamental, more primal than all your thinking and your texts? Or is it perhaps saying, I want to be included in all this dramaturgy talk? I'm tired of people calling me a movement coach, if that means they see me only as someone who comes in for a rehearsal or two to teach everyone how to bow. So, I invite you to join us in this work if you have time or maybe even if you don't. And if you've published in one form or another, one language or another work before or after 2014, that should be in this bibliography, but isn't, please be in touch. Thank you. I feel a little caught up in finding us of this. Please, anybody who wants to get involved with this, there's information about the bibliography in this old pamphlet. If anybody else is in here, reach out to me. We'll get it done. We'll get it done this year, opponents. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Our next speaker is my former classmate at the PhD program at the University of Washington, along with Ken Trinelli. There he is, they can. Former president of LMDA, Ken. This is her first LMDA. But, yes, that's right. She's a very accomplished scholar in the field of eco-criticism and many other things, and was a member of Bethesda East Mountain Project back in the day. Please welcome from the University of Oregon my friend, Theresa May. Where Chinook Wala, which I just introduced myself in that, a trade language among tribes and between tribes and settlers in the region of the Columbia River. But my deep family roots and my relations are here in Chicago, in also a great city of trade among the many tribes of the Great Lakes. And of course, Sins. And I come as an ally of settler descent. 100 years ago, my grandfather performed on a vaudeville stage not far from here. And so I consider, as Margaret Kovach writes in the Indigenous Methodologies, the implications of my ancestry. And that's a little what I want to talk about not the implications so much of my ancestry, but the need for Indigenous decolonizing methodologies to inform our approaches to dramaturgy to production and more the teaching of Native and First Nations plays. We've had a lot and happily so Indigenous playwrights and productions move into the spotlight across the country. In Oregon, I think it was a couple of years ago, there were three Native female playwrights work on the three major stages in the state of Oregon. Maybe the Dakota Access Pipeline sort of woke us up some. Maybe it's many other things coming together, including the incredible work of Indigenous dramatists. And many companies like Oregon Shakespeare Festival are taking steps to make sure that Indigenous methodologies inform those productions. Respecting Indigenous protocols, ways of knowing, often mean the difference between projects that contribute to decolonization and those that merely re-inscribe hegemonic patterns of artistic and intellectual colonization. And I think dramaturgs, though I'm not a practicing dramaturg, I have to confess that I am a historian and a practitioner and a working artist. But dramaturgs, it seems to me, are in a particularly unique position strategically to practice decolonizing in the academy and in theater generally. I'm speaking a little bit more to the academics, my fellow academics, because I know that in professional theater a lot of this work is already being done. But in the academy, we're a little bit slower to catch up. So how do we work? And one of those reasons, and Monique Monica pointed out, is that the academy is one of the major technologies of disempowerment over many years. And research itself has been a tool of colonization. Two minutes, are you kidding me? Speak slow. But I was just thinking, even about the dramaturgy of this place. Columbia University in Chicago and thinking about where that name come from, the 1893 Columbia exposition where there was a place called the White City in which they exhibited indigenous bodies from around the world as if acting out the John Gast, the goddess Columbia coming across, I've all seen that painting coming across the prairies. So the course of empire continues unless we actively, proactively stop it. So we need to educate ourselves about the epistemologies, the values of the specific tribes in the regions in which we work, the protocols. And there's three methodologies that are called out by indigenous theorists that I think are worth just tagging right now and we can talk later. I also brought a little bibliography. One is centering relationship as opposed to centering product or centering money or centering timeline. We've got to get the show up, but no centering relationship on homes, reaching out, centering consultation, meaning having indigenous people on board in the production process, having their input shape the product and giving back. That question, you know, Eve Tuck says decolonization is not a metaphor. And what she means is it's actually about giving land back. So there's an opportunity to give back, you know, I don't own land, but I can give back space. I can give back permission. I can give back inclusion. I can give back honor. I can give back generosity. I can give back opportunity. And I think, anyway, drama terms are in quite a position to do that. I think both in the academy and in the theater. Thanks. Thank you so much. Fantastic. Welcome to our organization. All right. This is the Theresa Helburn chair of drama at Bryn Mawr and is a veteran of actress theater of Louisville, the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, family of his own theater company, a big house in Philadelphia. Sorry. And professor also, Tony Yagel and Curtis and you name it, ladies and gentlemen, Mark Lord. It seems like a moment in my life to think about time and effort. And I wanted to share with you what I'm working on. It's a crass tool to say it's kind of a dramaturgical device that's to sort of like get at some pieces of truth. I don't believe that I'm like articulating any like essential truths about the universe. And kind of every piece of what it is that I say is like debatable, quibble-able and adaptable and reversible. So like, make your own first. So I'm making a grid. Just sort of spread out what it is that I do with my time or what it is that I might do with my time. So along the left side of this piece of paper grid which is actually like a real piece of paper you can see. I've divided what it is that I might do into the phases of evolution that are roughly adapted from phases that Meribeth uses to talk about the work of the open theater. And these four categories are practices which I think of as activities or behaviors research which is a place to do inquiry to apply curiosity and where there is no predicted end result. It's sort of free-floating inquiry. Development which is a place where I imagine myself moving something from one place to another. Getting a draft done making one version of a project. And then the last category is finishing which is executing reflecting and revising. So that's kind of one thing. And then I imagine along that, I don't imagine I have on my piece of paper the spheres in which I imagine that I might be active in my life. So I start way over. I imagine vaguely but not totally concentric circles where they're going to have my personal life over on the left and then I move into my creative life my teaching life my professional life which I distinguish from my creative and teaching lives. And then what I'm going to call my civic life but there are also others like those are things that I thought we might largely have in common but lots of us have lots of spheres in which we choose that we might be active and one of the things that I want to do with my tool is to figure out what are the spheres that are not that are not present that I'm not working in. And then if you sort of do this grid work under your own piece of paper you see that there's like a lot of squares. So I have a place where my personal practice can be identified which is the stuff that I do every day to be me take care of myself. And then next to that I have my creative practice and some of those behaviors that I do every day to be an artist are also things that I do to take care of myself. So if I meditate which I don't do every day but if I meditate that's going to show up in more than one place. And then I have a set of teaching practices which have to do with keeping up to date things and etc. But there's these 25 ish squares and I can look at that and the thing that I'm in the process of doing now is to look at it and say like where do I actually spend my time? Turns out that the place that I actually spend my time is on things that other people are going to notice and where I'm going to get in trouble if I don't do the thing that I'm supposed to do. What's what's harder but I feel like it's necessary and my grid is showing me is like these things like personal research well that's not even a category that I think in but this drama church school is telling me yeah it's according to your grid you should be doing some research maybe even every day into what it is that it feels like to be you not achievement oriented things like that's your personal development that's stuff to do too and I guess I'd encourage you to try this out see what you think think about like what what spheres you would add that like we don't have in common and I'd love to talk to anybody who like does it make some kind of progress in what it is that they're thinking about themselves thanks wow that's that is a hot topic myself okay our next figure is a celebrated translator of French and German plays is an accomplished theater historian someone who when you get to know him is absolutely hilarious from Knox College right here down the street in Galesburg Illinois Neil Blackhead so this could be a big mistake we'll find out in theory I talk about when I'm about to talk about all the time which is why I think I can talk about it without having notes in front of me so the title that Mickey gave me is the university dares the university dares to do what what I'm advocating for is the universities and colleges to dare to stage plays in translation my starting point here is is in part recognition that while I and others who do the same kind of work as me spend a lot of time encouraging professional theater companies to do plays in translation in the US and in the UK but particularly in the US I'm aware that that's a hard fight for reasons that I understand even though they frustrate me on a daily basis I've had some success with having productions done at American professional theater companies but something that Adam and I have established in the course of our efforts to advocate for plays in translation is that the university and college environment is one that lends itself much better to the risk taking involved and I do understand especially in a country where you can't even get people to go to see movies with subtitles I do understand as well as various economic cultural considerations why theater companies are low to take the risk supposed risk of doing a play in translation even if the play what's frustrating about it is partly that we're talking about in some cases about plays that have been had had multiple productions elsewhere in the world whether it's in Europe and Latin America but there's a really the ecosystems in the different countries very enormously but colleges and universities are in very different positions and I know only some of the people in the room work for colleges and universities but I would hope that those of you that work in professional theater also have in some cases ongoing relationships with institutes of higher education or certainly friendships with people who work at them my idea is that it's and I've done this myself it's much less of a risk for a theater department I was in an unfortunate position, I will admit because my department was never box office driven but I think that even if it had been I would have made the case that we were in a position where we could take the risk of trying a new translation the first translation of a play by Eval Palmettova or Griffero or whoever it might be one thing is that of course if you do the first production of a play at a college university it's the college world premiere it's not the world premiere so it's not as if you're taking away from the theaters that prize that they value so much of being able to say that they're doing the premiere so there have been cases of plays that I've translated that have been done at colleges and then have been done professionally and another point I want to make is there's sort of more of this going on than even I have realized I'm actually organizing a panel at a literary translation conference in November where I'm going to bring together people who've done this who've directed plays in translation with students and I heard from more people than I'd expected to and there are a lot of people doing this kind of work out there that we don't even know about I think in particular of people who like me until I decided there are a lot of people who work in theater departments especially small ones who direct and they often have to direct one production a year and no sooner have you got into design meetings for one production then your chair asks you well what are you going to do we need to plan the season for next year it's kind of this incessant cycle and once you reach the point where you've had a go at Bollier you've had a go at Shakespeare you've done your check of like I think there are people out there who you know they can do they can make the obvious choice of doing whatever the play is that American Theatre tells us is the most produced play in regional theater everywhere but I think there's a real scope for for introducing a kind of a different kind of diversity international diversity and I'm aware that you know the German and French work that I translate might not bring in the greatest variety but you know there are people out there translating plays from Arabic and from other languages too how do you find these plays well one thing Adam and I have an organization Adam and I and others called Tint Theatre and Translation Network we have a website that I'm in the process of trying to build out but I have included a list in there of productions that have been done at colleges and I'm going to keep building that out the web address is tintnet.org my phone is ringing goodbye Adam for sending you right there if anybody wants to know more about theater and translation these are the guys okay our next speaker, when we got Jeff Pearl I thought can we get a match set can we get the entire drama church faculty the University of Puget Sound formerly the University of Oregon my friend our next speaker is an award-winning historian with a very strong focus on women playwrights and a drama church and a director I believe also in her own right Sarah I want to give you on this and I'm taken with Mark Lord's tool because as I talked about it I thought oh I thought I was in the phase of development but I'm actually back to practices is what's happened this is what I've learned even with Mark Lord's drama church of all self-analysis two frames I want to put on this so that I'm a really fast walker I walk really fast I love being back in the city and getting to walk fast I view walking through the city as like practically a video game where I try to navigate to other people but I'm learning at this moment in my life and my professional life that sprints are probably not the right mode anymore and that navigation through people makes me feel powerful but it's not collaboration okay next I want to give you the frame that we talk about in our department sometimes because of my colleague Jess Smith she talks about from her graduate work with Anne Bogart talking about how people in artistic processes are sort of beginners middleers or enders they tend to love one part of that process or be particularly good at that part of the process and the first time she brought that up I thought oh I'm definitely a beginner or an ender and great problem of my life right now which is middle age and also my artistic processes is that everything is the middle topics in Toronto I shared about the civil rights performance walk I was in the midst of developing for the fourth quadrennial race and pedagogy conference at the University of Puget Sound that happened in the fall of 2018 the project builds on my research about British alternative theaters and their experimental forms my interest in political theaters and my reading of important strands of dramaturgical analysis and innovation from the last 20 years that have largely been grounded at this conference by some of my co-presenters and other collaborators and people I admire I had just at that point spent a semester working on a project in dramaturgy class going into local archives and trying to develop the possible routes for the walk and the goal was to have this sort of interactive immersive experience ready for the fall 2018 race and pedagogy national conference and at the time in June 2018 I confessed to you that I didn't really know what I was doing or if or how I was going to get there but I knew what the questions were and that I was excited about my collaborators I'm here to report that what I could do by the fall of 2018 to make audio stories and make a couple routes and share at the conference but that I learned that this project that I had envisioned was not an 18 month process which I thought at the time was even a long process but it's more like a five year process and that I moved the goal from the 2018 conference to the 2022 conference I'm really thankful that my colleagues in the department of sound and the department of theater are people who are not sprinters who have a really long term vision and who have been kind and generous to me as I learned in my middle age not to focus on the sprints and to continue supporting me in this project so three reasons that I needed to expand this project and work on being in the middle me, what I needed to do and how I needed to grow to be in phases of research and process and practice before I could actually develop Second, time with the community this is the most community based work I've ever done and it takes so much more work and I have so many more spaces that I need to be in and listen in and three students in terms of including my students in it and spending time with them to digest also need to do that much more slowly much more long term but it's also really hard to do this work when you're in the middle of doing a bunch of administrative work I'm in the part of my career where I'm department chair and where we've been hiring I'm super excited to introduce a new colleague to you in the future where I've been accepting the transition of extremely valued senior colleagues becoming emeritus and I'm also the faculty senate chair at my campus and we're rewriting our curriculum so I'm in the I'm trying to be in the middle dramaturgical processes are deep and they're long and I'm thankful to be able to walk on with them and through them here and in my home we get these really great ideas and we just start to explore them and then we gotta move on our next speaker is a graduate of the master's program at San Diego State and is currently in the performance studies program at NYU with an emphasis in this very very important emerging sub field about which I know very little more Desiree Fernandez I can't help but recognize who falls in the minority or the majority whose body background identity boxes them into othered or the excluded in performance when approaching a work that directly relates to a certain culture identity community must tread lightly we must care for this work with soft yet strong hands educated minds and good intentions and of course someone of that group or someone who specializes in that context should always be in the room however, how do we as drama terms as creative collaborators include the excluded many may argue well, why should we include them in the first place the answer is because we are creative collaborators we carry a dramaturgical awareness consciousness and responsibility in order to create, to grow to nurture a work that doesn't just impact the audience but our artists to help each other feel included I'm not advocating that we always have to serve as educators because it's a woman of color I understand and carry that burden and do not believe it is my duty to have to constantly be the voice and informant in the room however, as drama terms we serve as reminders of the importance of research of educating ourselves and creating an atmosphere of respect trust and a safe space when working as a dramaturg, dancer, choreographer and assistant director on Mielta Artista's Mas this issue came up a lot during design meetings, production meetings and even rehearsals Mas is a documentary about the dispensing of the Tucson Unified School District and their Mexican American Studies program taking place in the Femascal a sweat lodge in the form of redemptive remembrance mind gods, witness and harness the energy and space for these narratives while engaging topics of just chicken and small, feminism, racism politics students, teachers, friends and family preserve their identity in a society that prides itself of being a melting pot I was made aware that there were white designers, even cast members who felt uncomfortable who felt they had no connection and for them were had no right to create for this production when bringing this concern up to my director, he said well, it's good for them to feel uncomfortable if they walk into a room of people who all look the same but not like themselves well, then they finally understand how we feel so it's not our job to make them feel better about this I disagree I want to welcome artists who feel like they don't belong this comes from someone who holds many identities and constantly feels like an outcast I want artists to feel encouraged to be included to have empathy I informed the cast and the designers that though I appear or seem to be included in the subject matter based on the color of my skin and my ethnic background, I have a tongue of English but ears of Tagalog and Spanish I'm a woman with brown skin always trying to act white in order to assimilate my appearance is Latino but my blood boils Filipino but my mouth can't support my heritage I have never belonged to any identity to be mescla is to be unknown misunderstood and tie whatever you want me to be I am working to embrace the uncomfortable and use that as a way to fight to reclaim my own identity in the next production meeting after discussing my goals as a dramaturg with the director I addressed the creative team and said I want everyone to know in the room that you are in this room because you have the right to work on this production and if you don't feel that way I would like to welcome you to have a conversation with the director and myself if you feel disconnected then simply connect connect with the culture the stories the context as we dramaturgs do learning grow and use that to influence your work not to restrict it or limit it in the Mexican-American studies program they began each class with the poem En Le Cache by Luis Valdez it starts Do eres mi otro yo You are my other me Si te hago daño a ti If I do harm to you Me hago daño a mi mismo I do harm to myself Si te amo y respeto If I love and respect you Me amo y respeto yo I love and respect myself So as dramaturgs and literary managers being the responsible and conscious gatekeepers of diverse work how do we include the excluded What is our role in doing so What are our limitations and how do we as dramaturgs a role that's constantly excluded or undermining performance use our critical lens to create a space of inclusion while still embracing diversity Our next figure is another major contributor to this organization a current board member of LMDA a dramaturg and a scholar with a list of publications so long that if I actually memorated them she wouldn't have any time to speak Director of the MA in the theater I was working at San Diego State Chili or Yes, I promised that Desiree and I right while she did just graduate from my program we did not consult one another but you might see some similarities in our conversation So I'm going to present a very small case study in which I recognize both my limitations and my power So when I was asked to dramaturg a production of Lin Nautages' Sweat at the San Diego Reptory Theater I was excited I found the place so timely and its structure fascinating with these two timelines, eight years apart I'm familiar with the place setting even though I live in San Diego I do know about Reading in Pennsylvania That was my first thing, Reading Not Reading, Reading I didn't know, okay My marriage to people who are like some of the characters in the play So I felt comfortable taking on the assignment in some ways and deeply uncomfortable taking on the assignment in other ways While I felt qualified to talk about the place overall subject matter and to support the actors and the audience members in getting to know the characters and the world of the play I felt it necessary to recognize the potential for my own unconscious bias and my own limits in the first-hand understanding of racial discrimination The central questions of Sweat address how people of a certain part of society view others in society And when I received the offer to dramaturg the play I acknowledged this as a very significant potential blind spot for me There were two main places actually that I felt uncomfortable The class of the characters differs greatly from my own class as does the racial background of three of the central characters and instead of shying away from this feeling I asked a question I know how dramaturg I would be right now Could another dramaturg do a better job of bringing out the perspectives in this play That's an uncomfortable question, right? I've been offered this and I'm like could someone else do that, okay In dramaturgs we don't always or even often share the cultural experiences of the playwright and the characters and the plays on which we work We are always reaching across cultural borders We're often trying to interpret a text from another time another region of the world another cultural context We're often, I'm sorry In part that's what makes dramaturgies so great The learning, right? We get to do a brief search there However unlike many of those dramaturgies assignments Sweat is from this moment Even though the play is set in the years 2000 and 2008 our playwright is actually looking back a decade or more to understand this moment When it was written in 2015 and first performed in 2016 and it opened just a week before our shocking election of 2016 the play was hailed as prescient in focusing on this segment of the population that is it seems credited with electing the current president that we have So, faced with all that I felt that adding another dramaturg to the team would be a way to better represent all the perspectives in the play I decided to accept the assignment but also request the addition of a codramaturg Kimberly Kane We were also joined on the team by Patrice Amon as the assistant director As a team, Kimberly, Patrice and I worked together to bring our insights gave both through research and as well as through our personal experience Bring that into the rehearsal hall With characters like Cynthia and Chris Kimberly could be more fully able to speak to the questions centered on their actions and choices With a particular character in the play like Oscar Patrice could more fully speak to his experience and we could all share our reactions to the charged moments in the play So, do I believe that dramaturgs must be cast like actors? I would say sometimes, yes I think that if we have that person who has the relevant experience in the room, that is going to definitely add to the experience Maybe not in all cases Do you need to be a French descent to work on Molière? I don't think so But for other things that plays that are about this moment, about our cultural context about those kinds of issues then yes, we do need to make that effort to find the right dramaturg for that experience As an association I just want to mark that LMDA has long been in making a concerted effort to expand our membership to seek out and welcome dramaturgs of all backgrounds to the table Indeed, I was present at Crossing Borders 1 if you will, right? 2003? And that whole conference was focused on how to better expand our tent and to reach out and to invite in actively recruit people As the head of a graduate program I've been delighted to recruit and admit students who bring their lived experience and cultural perspectives to bear on theatre I'm particularly delighted to mark that I have five graduates of our program here Well actually, five former students who should open the tent with So I have Amritha, I have Bernardo I have Andrea, I have Eli and I have Desiree, of course And I'm just grateful that they are here and expanding our conversation in theatre here at both our conference and across the country Thank you Our next speaker is a great advocate of what I'm learning to call Civic Dramaturgy just at this conference but it's something that I've been interested in since I was a little baby dramaturg which is the focus on performance intersection with political culture and it follows Dramaturgy's oldest imperative which is to use performance culture to make the world a better place From Arizona State University, Karen G. Martin Starting from scratch and could build a university Dramaturgy lab and intentionally rework your graduate curriculum so that dramaturgical thought and practice were internal to it Where would you begin? In my university, I am fortunate enough to be at that beginning I have the opportunity to imagine and then grow and implement both a Dramaturgy lab and a Dramaturgy curriculum The prospect is invigorating but also slightly terrifying as I want to do it well so that I cultivate the skills of our students while also pushing the boundaries of our field Jeff Prowell speaks of dramaturgical engagement as the mulch that nourishes a project and I think that mulch can in fact nourish an entire theater department and perhaps a university If Dramaturgy is threaded through all that we do and all that we teach we can in fact dramaturg our very thinking about pedagogy as we consider what learning looks like now This lab and program should be, should accord with the mission of ASU and the values of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts ASU declares that it defines itself not by who it excludes but by who it includes How can Dramaturgy foster radical inclusivity not just in the shows that we produce but by the very people we invite in the room The mission of the institute says that we will position artists, scholars and educators at the center of public life using their creative capacities to build community and to transform our society into challenges We value excellence social embeddedness and projecting all voices How can Dramaturgy help to make real these aspirations so that they are not just lofty words on the page but instead lived enactments And what future path And what future paths might we see for our students While I want them to have the skill set to create new positions top theaters I'm even more interested in seeing them put their talents to use to create new spaces to elevate voices that have gone unheard for far too long These might be theater spaces but they also might not be It is less important to me that they make theater so long as they make worthwhile dialogues happen Success cannot simply be defined by who ends up making it big on hit shows Success should be celebrated when students apply critical rigor and dramaturgical thinking and practice in any number of spaces doing any number of things This is all new to me but it isn't necessarily new to you or you I need the wisdom of this room to determine the must haves the can't fails the avoid at all costs the thought of the force I need all of your input from the faculty side the student side to the institutional side the freelance side so that I can create a truly unique critically engaged wildly creative dramaturgy lab and curriculum Our next speaker is a historian and a performance study scholar whose work I have relied on for many many years I have a woman in theater and she's got the coolest name in the field from all this grown up justice confession to me and here's what I worry about I worry about playwrights I worry about emerging playwrights and I worry about 50-50 by 2020 so here's what I'm doing about it yeah the department of theater and film in partnership with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and the Yakna Pakafa Arts Council has created a residency for an emerging unpublished self identifying woman playwright and this is how it's going to go I don't know has anybody ever visited Oxford Mississippi in here Oxford is an amazing town it's a beautiful place and so is Ole Miss so our playwright is going to Oxford for a residency of 20 days this summer in just a few weeks she'll be coming she will receive a stipend of $4,000 local transportation we have a car for her housing and lovely guest house just off of the square in Oxford many meals and the opportunity to participate in quite a few social events Southern hospitality is a thing and it really is an Oxford we love a reception I'm going to read just this one part because I don't want to mess it up our goal is to create an immersive opportunity that provides experiences connection and exposure for both the artist and the community in the creative process we aim to support to create support for female voices in theater and aid in the development of creation of new work that could be a play among a lot of device performance or experimental work but also and this is really important we are seeding a love of Mississippi we are bringing an artist here so that she can understand the roots of Mississippi and experience our creative nature and then send that out into the world and spread the word so the idea of creating a piece is very important but also the idea of creating a relationship with our community not just students is also really really important to be us so when her playwright gets to Oxford she's going to have a lot of opportunities she can go and visit our Greek and Roman Antiquities collection on campus which is rivaled only by Harvard she can go to the Ole Miss Blues Archive which is the best in the world she can attend the Faulkner Conference, she can visit Faulkner's home, she can go to the Southern Writers Conference she can go to Food Ways Alliance she can experience Clarksdale Greenwood, Water Valley and Holly Springs, Mississippi and I hope to personally take her to the real Moonlight Casino that's a lot to do but you know what, she doesn't have to do any of that if she wants to come and hang out if she wants to sit at the balcony at City Grocery and enjoy a beverage if she wants to go to the best independent bookstore in the world Square Books, she can do that or she can take an app the idea is that this is for her not for us in terms of product but process and then the second summer really quickly, second summer during the year that playwright is going to work with my dramaturgy class and we're going to give them support dramaturgical support throughout the year this summer, we bring them back to Oxford for another shorter residency in which we will pay for everything and we will also do a full production of that play and this will be a recurring project and we hope to spread the word near and far our next speaker is a dramaturge director and arts manager who's a prowess I can attest to because she saved my bacon on multiple occasions whose accomplishments belie her youth a PhD candidate from the University of Maryland and one who deserves great great thanks for the support of this very conference that we are at right now Lindsay Crock dramaturgy and arts administration programs how can an intersectional praxis of the skills required in both fields inform the work we do and provide dramaturgy with an intra-disciplinary toolkit by LMGA's own couch there are over 60 programs in the US and Canada that either have a dramaturgy program or offer coursework in dramaturgy I also did a cursory search of the database from the association of arts management educators and they cite over 70 programs that produce arts management degrees or related coursework there are many positions within the academy professional theater and non-related theater jobs which we'll call dramaturgy adjacent for purposes here that can directly benefit from those who have a dramaturgical skill set and I know that my own practice as a dramaturg has been greatly impacted by my work as an arts administrator so here's a common sentiment that I've heard from undergrad my master's program and now in my PhD program you have to have a CV slash resume, slash portfolio, slash something that shows that you can do more than one thing now obviously this isn't true for all career paths but as someone who was interested in dramaturgy undergrad moved into arts management for my master's and now I was looking toward the academy it's a refrain that's all too familiar it's here where an intersectional praxis is imperative speaking from my own experience in professional theater there are artistic directors and related artistic staff who do not see or do not want to value dramaturgs in an institution I have been told we don't need a dramaturg for this production just program notes the response I ran in my head was you might not need a dramaturg for this production but do you need a dramaturg for your institution I know a few people better equipped than dramaturgs to analyze text and meaning whether that is saying this meaning to stakeholders that are actors, directors designers, donors or executive liaisons dramaturgs can provide an essential function in information sharing better yet arts administrators who are dramaturg adjacent may be equipped to bring these skills into their jobs creating more cohesive institutional narrative could we save dozens of organizations for potentially extraneous rebranding if there were members of the staff who better understood the crafting of narratives in a way that enhances audience understanding I gather we could I'm hopeful that the day is coming where the next round of artistic directors and program directors are also dramaturgs in equal three suggestions on how we may get there one, equipping arts managers with dramaturgical skill sets and vice versa knowing how to do financials and textual analysis in the same space may heighten the way we talk about dramaturgy both in professional theaters and the academy two, creating opportunities within the academy of pre-professional programs to prepare students for dramaturgical training for these jobs are we encouraging the next generation of artists to highlight their dramaturgical training in interviews whereby staff may witness firsthand the importance of dramaturgy in an artistically administrative capacity three, create pathways in professional and pre-professional programs wherein dramaturgy is seen as crucial a function as directing, designing or teaching if we place value on the role of dramaturgs both inside the rehearsal room and out the case may be made that they're as valuable and potentially more so inside artistic resources than other career paths that often lead them elsewhere in my masters program I was surrounded by people who do not work in the arts and frankly most of them only had a passing familiarity with the artistic institutions throughout the Baltimore and DC region an exercise that changed the way I think about my work in theater and thus as a dramaturg happened here I was surrounded by people who had little interest in the arts and few saw the importance of artistic institutions in their own community so I asked the following why does your work or organization matter what are you bringing to the community that doesn't exist in essence why do we care about what you do having to continually express why theater was crucial to our community alongside my colleagues was an extended exercise in dramaturgical thinking depending on the audience the narrative needed to be adjusted a practice arts administrators in dramaturgs often do that may well be supported by a dramaturgy and dramaturgy I often had to share the stage and state why theater was important and appeal to donors alongside those who were talking about their domestic violence relief shelters child abuse relief centers and anti-human trafficking organizations it is crucial to introduce dramaturgy into arts administration for this very reason we need to tell a story I'll leave you with something one of my professors says Dr. Patricia Tardcobbin she always says something that continually encouraged me to explore this intersectional process both now in my PhD program and in my freelance career she says if you can define in one sentence what dramaturgy is you're not thinking fully about what dramaturgy can be thank you our next speaker is a producer, performer and maker of experimental children's theater among other things she's a voice artist dramaturg with a history of collaborations in the U.S. in London a recent graduate of the MA at the Royal Central in London yeah Jess Coughlin Coughlin she her hers I'm a freelance dramaturg, researcher, creative producer question mark based in New York but I'm currently making work in the U.K., the U.S. and Mexico I want to talk a little bit today about an aspect of dramaturgy and device theater in hopes of finding some community around the questions that I've been wrestling with in my own practice and I've heard a lot of talk around in the last day or so that relates to what this is so hopefully we'll be able to have a conversation later about this topic at the root of the questions that I've been considering in my own practice is what happens to dramaturgical practice when there's no existing text to analyze or engage and what new potential does that offer us as a field it feels like a lot of the time a dramaturg is invited into the process only when there's an existing draft if not a finished play but as a devising dramaturg I get to be in the room from the minute the idea occurs which is really fantastic a play has a structure and as I'm really wrestling with my own practice so does the creative process as dramaturgs we get to observe and critique the structures of meaning and the content and the form and the themes of a play whether they already exist or whether they're in development like in a devising room but I'm particularly obsessed with applying whenever possible the same analytical and critical tools to the creative process itself what are the structures and how we're making this piece how can our creative process be structured in a way that mirrors the content that we're trying to engage or the themes of forms and what does that offer us and most importantly what I'd love to talk to you all about after this is how we go about analyzing the creative process and what are the benefits of that practice I think it's a conversation this is in conversation with a lot of the hot topics that we've heard today and I think a couple that are coming and it's not really it's not a new idea many points came up yesterday in the new works panel session that evidenced an active dramaturg a process already happening for example Martín talked from a creation standpoint about this question of how are we evaluating new works and how do we adjust our process to address implicit biases you're probably already practicing process dramaturgy in whatever spheres you work in but it's not an idea that I found a ton of literature or community or discourse around here in the Americas I feel like a lot of literature I've encountered is coming from Europe and I feel like there's contributions to the field that are maybe more recent than I haven't found or that are actively happening that I would love to discuss and gather data on and I think this is a particularly topical practice to the theme of this conference which is crossing borders you can't cross a boundary that you can't see and the practice of analyzing our creative process from within it forces us to attend to and interrogate the assumptions and boundaries that we have as artists and which reverberate inter-creative processes whether or not we intend or want them to so a quick example in 2015 so I primarily make work for young children and working on a piece in 2015 with two collaborators and at the end of the process for a paper I retroactively analyzed our creative process we were trying to make a piece for people of all ages including young people and adults at the same time and in reflecting back on the creative process I found a critical assumption that we made about the theatrical competence of young children which defined a huge aspect of the work we were making it ended up discarding part of our intended audience and it held us back from a whole set of creative possibilities in the work itself it also illuminated ways in which I as an artist for young audiences was underestimating the audience I wanted to serve so it really allowed me to make an evolution in my own artistic practice and I guess I realized like if I had attended to that process of our making from the get-go from within it maybe I would have seen that moment and as a dramaturg been able to give us as a group an active choice about it been able to highlight what are the structures that we're using to make this piece about how we're making what we're making and those kinds of hidden assumptions are always present in what we're making because we're all human and attending to them has the potential to highlight the boundaries and exclusions in our work that we're not even aware of at the start as a queer artist attending to things that are excluded is something I'm particularly passionate about and I'm sure I'm not alone in that in this room again this came up yesterday it's not a new idea but I think that process dramaturg is something that we could be talking about more and more publicly and engaging with at the university level as well and it goes right alongside production dramaturgy and audience reception dramaturgy and textual dramaturgy they're all reflexive to each other and without really looking at the dramaturgical process of how we're making what we're making we can't evolve our art form so we I think if we insist on being in the room as early as possible whether it's a devised process or traditional process we as dramaturgs have the power to really look at our art form and how we're making what we're making and what can change and what we want to change so that American theater can continue to evolve and welcome new perspectives and new voices and move more towards this experiential global generation of makers, artists and audiences that are coming up today how we go about this is a big question I have personally developed a very strong critical reflective practice that helps me engage with the process from within it and I'd love to hear your ideas and tools for doing so as well thank you so much our next speaker is a Brooklyn play Brooklyn based new play director of dramaturge with credits of LaMama, Edward Fringe and the international human rights festival Rachel Levin is playwrights and residents at the university level I believe that we need to create theater pedagogy pedagogies that give the new play development process of equal emphasis as we do realism and classical text it is our responsibility as theater makers and gatekeepers to increase sustainable artistic practices and diversity within the field of theater we need to re-examine the new play development process and give playwrights the opportunity to get paid to write plays I also believe that representation matters and many times students when they are pursuing their BFA and BAs they do not feel represented in the theater season that is chosen this often sometimes leads to problematic casting choices at the undergraduate level and then this translates into the real world there is an erasure that occurs when we have problematic casting I think we can build a bridge with these seemingly disper problems I believe we can make artistic livelihoods better for playwrights and for undergraduate theater majors by employing playwrights to be artists and residents at universities by conditioning them to write plays for the undergraduate cohort having a playwright in residence would allow students to work on developing new plays with a playwright directly in the room young directors, dramaturgs, designers and actors would have the chance and practical experience of working with a playwright students would learn how to navigate asking questions in a room when working with that playwright how to be flexible with rewrites they didn't even know existed in their play young theater makers would also learn that nothing is set in stone and that rewrites are a good sign because the playwright is learning what is and isn't working with their show I believe a playwright in residence program would be a symbiotic relationship for universities and playwrights because working on a new play creates a more process oriented pedagogy and students would have the playwright in residence would be able to lead the residency with a new play that not only had developmental support but also a student production I also believe that having a playwright in residence would allow a students to engage in dialogue with a playwright on multiple levels the playwright in residence would have the opportunity to lead lectures, hold moderated discussions have special topics classes about their process with the undergraduate students the playwright in residence could even have open office hours where students could watch them write or write alongside them this would mirror what Susan Laurie Parks is doing in the lobby at the public theater watch me work which ended this performance she welcomes anybody to the lobby to write with her or watch her write for 40 minutes and then after those 40 minutes are complete there is a Q&A with Susan Laurie Parks where Parks discusses questions about process and people can talk about their own creative process or what they are coming up against I know having a playwright in residence program is not a new concept the university is already taking this on Rutgers has a playwright in residence where they welcomed Martina Mayock, Madeline George David Azmi and Anne Washburn just to name a few Club Thumbs Directing Fellows and Club Thumbs Playwrights are also welcome to NYU's Playwrights Horizon School to workshop shows Ole Miss sought out playwrights for a 20 day summer residency in Oxford Mississippi I would like to challenge anyone that is teachers or that works at the university level to bring this back to your institution or if you work for regional theater that you start to create a commission program as well I'm also going to ask that you specifically invite playwrights to this program that were mentioned in yesterday's session playwrights under the radar or that you are getting playwrights from the Kilroy's List if we want to define and create theater for the 21st century we need to find every way we can to commission and support playwrights we need to write plays we need to give them space, time and financial support to do their shows we need to create the world we want to see represented on stage our next speaker was the recipient of the 2017 dramaturgy driven grant right here at LMDA tells me she's still working on it she's part of the Arkansas new play festival the Hartford stage and a performer at Lincoln Center please welcome Amy Jensen for the course degree in terms of application and time of change dramaturges are evaluated and assessed how are we structuring these processes to encourage growth so word about growth you're natural hearing that can feel fantastic psychologists caution how character or ability-based feedback can support rigid or fixed identity beliefs so if you're a natural then things should come naturally our guess for people who aren't naturals so if I have to work hard I'm not a natural if I reach a point where it no longer feels natural then there must be something wrong with me where I should hide from the suspicion that I'm a fraud so a challenge the evaluation can be internalized not as just an evaluation of work but ability character and identity am I talented creative intelligent enough especially this is especially challenging in a talent-focused field or one that can appear to be this is a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset Karen Dwick had written about that in 2006 that a growth mindset focuses on processes and a belief that effort choices and strategies can lead to growth many of you are involved in evaluations assessments and developing the criteria behind them can you help this process emphasize growth can you review how criteria is framed and defined so it's clear it's based on choices and actions for example being you're a collaborator versus you listen to others you share your ideas, you ask for help you accept criticism, you take responsibility you negotiate, you compromise and so on or professionalism when we have the implicit definitions criteria might be faulty I don't believe that anyone has not met someone who hasn't had the assumption that to be professional is to not need help and to not make mistakes we need to define the choices and strategies that someone makes instead to be professional review of the criteria is framed in a way to encourage further experience and study or AP theater AP English class in which the rubric said pedestrian thinking could it instead have said analyze the parts to the whole draw out complexity and differences in comparison something that I could more easily think towards taking action share criteria beforehand before the evaluation happens encourage individuals to record their actions and choices and strategies when they come to and speak with you if it is a live evaluation can you consider what extent people are involved in the process used defining the criteria of how they should be evaluated so for example an ideal situation of especially I think of an internship what if someone was asked what is your goal with this what were the steps that will help you get there what obstacles might be in your way what strategies can you use that you will need to employ if you have been in an internship you might have had an experience when this was asked of you found in my three internships this wasn't always the case if you are working with students who are going to do an internship you could support them in being able to define them this for themselves and to present this to the theater if the theater is not introducing this how do your evaluations acknowledge and value effort and work and what will help facilitate that is there a track or a record being made either on your part or theirs what are effective questions to encourage developing strategies to deal with obstacles and how can the assessment and reflection process include modeling ways to deal constructively with critical feedback as a way to grow I think this can also be part of a larger culture of what are the stories that we are telling within our organizations about success how much time do we spend highlighting the persistence the challenges that have been overcome we believe in growth we believe in reflection let's help make that explicit our last speaker is unfortunately for you, me and I want to start with a little bit of a straw poll I really don't want to call anybody out here but how many of you have read Lessing's Hamburg Drama Church okay now please no keep your hand up please keep your hand up okay now put your hand down if you are also fluent in German try again and folks at home playing the home game you guys can do this too alright ready now we're going to start all over again listen carefully drama church you have read Lessing's book the Hamburg Drama Church okay now please keep your hand up if you do not also read German so in other words if you read German okay now keep your hands up alright everybody who does not read German who thinks they have read the Hamburg Drama Church is wrong that includes me because if you have read the English translation of the Hamburg Drama Church you have read the work of Helen Zimmer who was a fantastic philosopher German English intellectual of Jewish extraction who was very interested in trying this is in the 1890s she was very interested in trying to stem the rising tide of fascism and anti-Judaism in Germany as early as the 1890s by popularizing the most conscientious the most civil rights oriented the most forward thinking compassionate German philosophers of the time and Lessing was the head of that list right Helen Zimmer was not interested in the theater Helen Zimmer was interested in philosophy that advances compassion and the justice okay so her agenda was to translate that that part of Lessing that was interested in that and maybe you guys don't know this but Lessing you know despite the fact that he was a dead white man right which I like yeah right but he was a huge advocate for civil rights of Jews in Germany at the time his best friend Moses Mendelssohn who was one of the great translators of Spinoza into German and one of the great philosophers today could not enter Hamburg except through the cattle gate because he was Jewish of course in the next two centuries that was going to that anti-Jewer sentiment was going to result in holocaust and pogroms all over Europe so Helen Zimmer saw that coming she tried to stop it and that was the translation of the Hamburg drama trilogy when Grove Press in under Victor Lang reprinted this in the 1960s it was just the reprint of that original edition and then when they reprinted it again in the 1980s it was just a reprint of that edition so there's only been one English translation of the Hamburg drama trilogy it was Helen Zimmern's it's fine except that it doesn't have any fear in it so what you don't know about Lessing is that he was passionately interested in gesture in stage pictures in the work of the actor the specific actor personalities in engagement in gin there's like 40% of that book is missing and it's all the stuff that we are the most interested in now Lessing may be part of this particular intellectual tradition that we are trying to branch out from and I am a huge component of that but the truth is is that drama trilogy around the world right now to this day shapes itself according to what Lessing wrote so you owe it to yourselves to read this book I don't say buy it because it's expensive but read it from your from your local university library because they should have it so this is it the new yeah did you read this one? then I apologize this is the Hamburg drama trilogy by G.E. Lessing movie complete English translation annotated the main work of this was done by Wendy Arons yeah that's great I'm sad to go there's tons of annotations everything you could possibly imagine that you might need about this book by Natalia Baldiga who was formerly a Tufts and I played a big role in this I didn't do a lot of the content work but I did a lot of the fundraising and I wrote an essay for it I guess I was a project manager that talks a lot about this organization and ends with a quote from Dr. Martin Ky Green Rogers who was the time and still is the president of the Dramaturgies of the Americas which is this we are indebted to Lessing's advocacy of the field without being beholden to how he originally thought of the work and the theory of drama trilogy that I think is the brilliance of the field that he helped forefront you realize the true value of drama trilogy may only manifest if we are on the front lines with theaters so that the field of drama trilogy may grow in tandem with the art itself I want to take a moment for sure and give big thanks to the staff volunteers here at Columbia University thank you all for of course to Dr. Ky Green president of the LMDA Keith that's even better rhymes more Brian Court is out of the board and Brian Moore who has been holding my hand ever since I became the VP of educational research I also want to thank our root captains and if you would come up here please LaVina Jaiwani come up here for a second she's LaVina I'm doing this LaVina I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the work of this woman not only has she been my room captain and this is amazing but way back at the beginning of my professional career LaVina was my very first drama trilogy student at Carnegie Mellon she helped create the program at Carnegie Mellon University she helped design it she helped write ghost life because she helped articulate what was the most important things for students to know and her work is amazing so she beat me, she beat CMU and I really wanted to share with you guys that she also beat cancer so