Dramaturgy at Work

Starting out from the author’s extensive practice as a dramaturg and educator, this book identifies and elucidates the varied selection of dramaturgical tools that have been used in the experimental practices of contemporary dance, theater, and performance in Europe since the early 2000s.

In order to trace the elements of dramaturgy that are at work in the creation and production of a performance, this book focuses on how performances “work” dramaturgically. It illuminates questions, work processes, situations, and decision‑making through stories that unravel the making of a performance. Drawing on scenes across various contexts in Europe and beyond, with their self‑organized platforms, magazines, and workshops, this book ventriloquizes a multiplicity of voices, of more than 40 dance‑makers and theater makers, performers, dramaturgs, and artists from other disciplines. It understands dramaturgy as larger, more informal and diffuse than the work of the dramaturg alone. Structured around four dramaturgical clusters—material, methods and procedures, operations, and social relations—this book proposes a nonlinear framework through which creation processes can be examined. These clusters address material resistance, heuristic inquiry, audience‑probing operations, and the dramatization of social relations in collaborative work.

This is a fresh and enlightening book for anyone doing, discussing, or thinking about dramaturgy, at university level, in professional practice, or beyond.