DRAMATURGY

If you navigated to this page, I imagine you either:​

• Are asking what the hell a dramaturg is

• Also want to know if it's contagious

• Are a dramaturg yourself

• Have said, "Some of my best friends are dramaturgs" at some point in your life

• Are expecting me to spell it with an "e" so you can send me an angry email

• Spell it with an "e" because you're French

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But seriously, I started as a dramaturg in my senior year in high school, when my very prescient drama teacher Mr. Worsham asked me to be the dramaturg on our UIL One-Act Play production of Lorca's Blood Wedding. (I also played the Beggar Woman, but that's a whole other story...)

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To me, production dramaturgy has always been about building bridges, between text and performance, between theatre and other disciplines, between playwrights and writer's block, between playwrights and inspiration, between potential/dreams and reality.

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My identity as a dramaturg has been central to the development of my aesthetic and artistic process as an actor, a director, a playwright, an arts administrator, and an educator.

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I have provided dramaturgical assistance for plays new and old at companies and universities such as Alley Theatre, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Dallas, Arkansas Arts Council, University of Northern Colorado, WaterTower Theatre, Washington University in St. Louis, and Abilene Christian University, as well as the aforementioned Snyder High School.

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I have devoted a great deal of my dramaturgical career to assisting with concept productions of Shakespeare, whether flower child psychedelia in As You Like It, a 1950s Taming of the Shrew, a salsa-infused Midsummer Night's Dream, a gender-bent Queen Lear, or a rootin' tootin' Wild West rendition of Twelfth Night.

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Other scripts I have loved being the dramaturg for are Cyrano de Bergerac (twice), The Diary of Anne Frank (twice), and Dancing at Lughnasa.

Twelfth Night,

or The Gunfight at

the Illyria Corral
Adapted from
William Shakespeare