>An article about dramaturgs – that gave me – pause.

Here are some of the comments following the lead article:

“Many plays are ruined by dramaturgs who have an agenda such as feminism or strict rules for writing a play. All plays aren’t the same. It used to be that the director or producer-director acted as dramaturg, such as Elia Kazan with Tennessee Williams. By the way, the singular for phenomenon is NOT phenomena. Your logos are blocking this box so I can’t see what I’ve written completely!”

“This article seems to start from an assumption that playwrights need help. My formula for New Play Development is pretty simple: Listen to the playwright. Trust the playwright. If a playwright knows what she’s doing, then just get out of her way. If she doesn’t, she can ask for help. Either way, she steers the ship.”

This article and these comments have given me – pause – for some of the thick/thin skin revealed in this process. I’d like to think that playwrights could be as robust as actors are in rehearsal to taking “notes” in “NPR” – (a grouse here: must we abbreviate everything to a code instead of using the words that describe our actions?)

At any rate, this article gave me a lot to think about and I wanted to share.