What are the available tools for teaching practical dramaturgy in the contemporary performance field, where each event has its own performative logic, lives in a different context, and triggers different kinds of relationships? As teachers of practical dramaturgy, we cannot provide recipes: in devising things “work” or “don't work” depending on the context they are in; each performance provides different unfolding, timing, landscape. If dramaturgy is “unfolding of the performance for the audience” as Behrndt and Turner write in their book ´Dramaturgy and Performance´ (2007) - what are the strategies to teach this unfolding in the classroom? What are the tools, approaches and exercises that students need to encounter in order to be able to develop coherent performances with their own inner system, that are unique almost every time.
Contemporary performance happens between presence and meaning, where the narrative and the sense that can be represented in words is often not the main tool for the encounter with the audience. Here we build dramaturgies that can be described as intensities, presences, energies, processes, gestures, experiences. They are built on full-body knowledge and equally experienced by the audience as such. How can we teach something this complex in the classroom? What is the role of words in these exercises? What are the pedagogical principles? How much can we explain? How do we trigger? What are the questions the dramaturg can ask? What are the strategies of dialogue, and support for processes that they need to possess? How does one teach flow and composition in the classroom?
Dramaturgy is one of the most overused words in contemporary performance theory. It is so fashionable that it has become a word that can replace almost any word in theater vocabulary, like a joker in a deck of cards. But at the same time there is very little written about practical dramaturgy, on how to engineer these “unfoldings of experiences”, aspects that the makers need to be aware of, and what to base dramaturgical decisions on. And we, teachers of dramaturgy, are often lonely in finding ways to provide the students with this knowledge within the classroom setting.
This symposium aims to provide a platform for teachers of practical dramaturgy to exchange good practices, bad experiences and unresolvable problems connected to teaching practical dramaturgy; to talk about specific practical tasks, as well as organisation of individual courses. The sessions will consist of short 10 min max presentations that will provide a basis for discussion. Additionally, the event will facilitate the formation of smaller working groups and roundtable discussions.
The symposium is organized by the KALD department / Prague Performing Arts Academy in collaboration with Residenz Leipzig, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig and DAS Theatre/Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Convener: doc. MgA. Sodja Zupanc-Lotker, Ph.D.
Committee: Thomas Frank, doc. Miguel A. Melgares, Ph.D., Dr. Dag Kemser and MgA. Mgr. Marta Ljubková
Send your proposal (200 words max abstract of the presentation and 200 words max bio) to sodja.zupanclotker@damu.cz before October 5th, 2024. You will be notified by November 5th, 2024
There is no fee for the symposium. We cannot provide financial support for participants. Only invitation letters.
25. září 2024
