Dramaturgy can enrich film understanding, for those who make films, as well as for those who want to analyse and understand better why they are made how. Film dramaturgy supports the creative process of filmmaking, especially the work of the authors, directors and producers. Students and professionals can benefit from this knowledge.
Dramaturgy in the Making maps contemporary dramaturgical practices in various settings of theatre-making and dance to reveal the different ways that dramaturgs work today. It provides a thorough survey of three major areas of practice - institutional dramaturgy, production dramaturgy and dance dramaturgy - with each illustrated through a range of case studies that illuminate methodology and which will assist practitioners in developing their own 'dramaturgical toolbox'. In tracing the development of the role of the dramaturg, the author explores the contribution of Lessing, Brecht and Tynan, foundational figures who shaped the practice. She excavates the historical and theoretical contexts for each strand of the work, uniquely offering a history of dance dramaturgy and its associated theories. Based on extensive research, the volume features material from the author's interviews with fifty eminent professionals from Europe and North America, including: Robert Blacker, Jack Bradley, DD Kugler, Ruth Little and Hildegard De Vuyst. Through these, a detailed and precise insight is provided into dramaturgical processes at organisations such as the Akram Khan Company, les ballets C de la B (Gent), the National Theatre and the Royal Court (London), the Schaubühne (Berlin) and The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab (Utah), among others. Dramaturgy in the Making will prove indispensable to anyone working in theatre or wanting to better understand the dramaturgical processes in performance-making today. The book features a foreword by Geoff Proehl, author of Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey.
The image of the dramaturg resembling a stuffy librarian, as opposed to the largely intuitive process of theatre making, belongs to the past. Contemporary theatre performances not only tell a story, but constantly reflect on the world in which that story takes place and is shown. As a result, dramaturgy has become part of the artistic process. Thus everybody involved in a theatre production is concerned with dramaturgical thinking, i.e. how to relate to material, process, audience and society. The dramaturg crosses borders between theory and practice, between theatre makers, performance and audience. 'Dramaturgy. An Introduction' provides a broad overview of the concept of dramaturgy and the profession of the dramaturg. It is intended for students and teachers of theatre and performance studies, but also for directors, scenographers, actors and for all lovers of theatre.
In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema delineates a new performative genre based on replay and self-awareness. The book argues that in-person reenactment, an actual person reenacting her past on camera, departs radically from other modes of mimetic reconstruction. In Person theorizes this figure's protean temporality and revisionist capabilities and it considers its import in terms of social representativity and exemplarity. Close readings of select, historicized examples define an alternate, confessional-performative vein to understand the self-reflexive nature of postwar and post-holocaust testimonial cinemas. The book contextualizes Zavattini's proposal that in neorealism everyone should act his own story in a sort of anti-individualist, public display (Love in the City and We the Women). It checks the convergence between verit experiments, a heightened self-critique in France and the reception of psychodrama in France (Chronicle of a summer and The Human Pyramid) in the late fifties. And, through Bazin, it reflects on the quandaries of celebrity biopics: how the circularity of the star's iconography is checked by her corporeal limits (Sophia her Own Story and the docudrama Torero ). In Person traces a shift from the exemplary and transformative ethos of fifties reenactment towards the un-redemptive stance of contemporary reenactment films such as Lanzmann's Shoah, Zhang Yuan's Sons, Andrea Tonacci's Hills of Chaos. It defines continuities between verite testimony (Chronicle, and Moi un Noir) and later para-juridical films such as the Karski Report and Rithy Panh's S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine suggesting the power of co-presence and in person actualization for an ethics of viewership.
This book provides an overview of the growing field of screenwriting research and is essential reading for both those new to the field and established screenwriting scholars. It covers topics and concepts central to the study of screenwriting and the screenplay in relation to film, television, web series, animation, games and other interactive media, and includes a range of approaches, from theoretical perspectives to in-depth case studies. 44 scholars from around the globe demonstrate the range and depths of this new and expanding area of study. As the chapters of this Handbook demonstrate, shifting the focus from the finished film to the process of screenwriting and the text of the screenplay facilitates valuable new insights. This Handbook is the first of its kind, an indispensable compendium for both academics and practitioners.
The Dramaturgy of the Spectator explores how Italian theatre consciously adjusted to the emergence of a new kind of spectator who became central to society, politics, and culture in the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author argues that while a focus on spectatorship in isolation has value, if we are to understand the broader stakes of the relationship between the power structures and the public sphere as it was then emerging, we must trace step-by-step how spectatorship as a practice was rooted in the social and cultural politics of Italy at the time. By delineating the evolution of the Italian theatre public, as well as the dramatic innovations and communicative techniques developed in an attempt to manipulate the relationship between spectator and performance, this book pioneers a shift in our understanding of audience as both theoretical concept and historical phenomenon.
Recent shifts in the theatrical landscape have had corresponding implications for dramaturgy. The way we think about theatre and performance today has changed our approaches to theatre making and composition. Emerging new aesthetics and new areas of dramaturgical work such as live art, devised and physical theatre, experimental performance, and dance demand new approaches and sensibilities. New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice is the first book to explore new dramaturgy in depth, and considers how our thinking about dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg has been transformed. Edited by Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane, New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice provides an unrivalled resource for practitioners, scholars, and students.
The experience of architectural spaces is formed by the way they are staged. The Drama of Space examines the composition and articulation of architectural spaces in terms of spatial dramaturgy, as a repertoire of means and strategies for shaping spatial experience. This fundamental approach to architectural design is presented in four parts: Archetypal principles of spatial composition are traced from the study of three assembly buildings of the early modern period in Venice. Theatre, film, music, and theory provide background knowledge on dramaturgy. Detailed analyses of 18 international case studies offer new perspectives on contemporary architecture. The book ends with a systematic presentation of the dramaturgy of space, its parameters and tools, in architectural design.
