What is dramaturgy?
Dramaturgy has lots of different meanings, changing from time to time and from culture to culture. In several countries, dramaturgy can have the meaning of someone who merely writes theatre plays. In others, a dramaturge is seen as the « first spectator », someone who works closely with the director and gives him/her feedback. In my work as a dramaturge I especially focus on the second definition of dramaturgy: operating in the service of the artist and the artwork, accompanying the creative production process, giving advice and clustering methodological, technical and imaginative knowledge.
This clarified, confusion stays when it comes to the details dramaturgy. Even many of my colleagues did not exactly know what I was doing. Working in the studios, working at the office, writing, running around in the hallways… So, what was I doing precisely? Well, the most important tasks of a dramaturge are generally: doing profound research to possible topics of new performances, writing scripts, giving feedback to the director(s), and defending the original intentions of the script (as in a creative process one can easily move away from that what the performance is actually about).
However, not every director or choreographer has the same demands and every project asks a different way of working. Dutch dramaturge Janine Brogt once said in an interview with the magazine Etcetera : « I’m not always the same dramaturg ». Taken this in consideration, dramaturgy can be seen as a fluid concept that adapts itself to a specific demand or situation.
Emio Greco I
Pieter C. Scholten
For over two years I worked closely with choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten at the Ballet national de Marseille. As a dramaturge, I worked on several perfomances as Appearance (2017), Non Solo Medea (2018) and Disappearance (2019).
Another, less evident, task I had as a dramaturge was the creation of an online platform for the archives of the Ballet national de Marseille. With the help of a filmmaker and a web developer I worked on the “dramaturgy of the screen”. How, through the mediation of a screen, to create a conncetion between audience and archives? How to give shape to these archives? And how to make them less static and reflect the joy and virtuosity of dance?
The collaboration with EGIPC continued in Amsterdam when they asked me in 2021 to write an article for their new dance magazine. I wrote the article « The Importance of Air » on their performance WE, the BREATH.
Cie Labotilar
Cie Labotilar is composed of two talented young choreographers called Vito Giotta and Angel Martinez Hernandez. After meeting the duo at the Ballet national de Marseille, I started working with Angel and Vito in 2021 and accompanied them by the writing of several concepts. One of those concepts, PHOBOS, was realised in collaboration with the Italian dance/circus company Eleina D. During the process we explored the affect of fear while playing with light and dark, the visible versus the invisible. Angel and Vito feel very much inspired by cinema and visual art giving their pieces dreamlike atmospheres. PHOBOS premiered in 2023 at Klap Maison pour la Danse in Marseille.
Marieke Buytenhuijs 