How does it happen? A dramaturg speaks . . . (Patrick Aaron Harris)
Patrick Aaron Harris, MLitt, MFA
Bollywood Twelfth Night is the 3rd opportunity I’ve had to serve as dramaturg for an Austin Shakespeare production. I’ve worked in Shakespeare production for over a decade as an actor, director, and designer. And people have a more or less correct idea about what goes into each of those roles. But whenever I tell my friends or family about doing dramaturgy, I’m met with long silence and confused stares. So if you’re reading this hard-to-say, easy to misspell word cobbled together from ancient Greek and scratching your head, you’re not alone.
What exactly a dramaturg does can vary from production to production. Some work happens behind the scenes during rehearsals. Some is more oriented to public. And still some dramaturgical work happens before rehearsal even begins. But it all boils down to one thing:
Dramaturgs study plays so that they can help actors, directors, and designers make the play work.
That means I do a lot of reading and research. For Shakespeare’s plays, and plays by his contemporaries, I spend a lot of time studying different scholarly editions of his plays to help make sense of the allusions or jokes that probably got belly laughs in the 1600s that don’t quite land anymore. In some cases, I’ve led actor workshops on Shakespeare’s plays to help actors take ownership of the language and make choices that will connect with the audience. I might even be working on preparing the script with the director before rehearsals even begin to modernize the language or trim the script down for time.
And like I said, there’s a public component to being a dramaturg too. If you think you’ve seen me at an Austin Shakespeare performance before, it might have been one of our post-show talkback sessions (common fare for a dramaturg). On the creative front, I’ve gotten to build web materials and lobby displays that extend production design concepts into public spaces (ask me about the hipster puppet I once made!).
Much of what I do is researching or writing (even just thinking) about historical and cultural contexts relevant to our show’s setting or “concept”. Take our Bollywood Twelfth Night for example. The “Bollywood” part of that is a term that came about during India’s surge in cinematic output in the 1970s, quickly outpacing Hollywood. Hindi cinema (as it’s more formally known) has a longer history dating back to the early 20th century and is famous worldwide for incorporating traditional Indian fashions and dance styles and innovating a genre of music entirely unique to Bollywood films. It’s fair to say that Bollywood celebrates Indian people and Indian culture. So naturally, the thing that’s been most on my mind (nagging, really) is the friction between staging a play by Shakespeare (Britain’s favorite poet-playwright) and the imperial history that brought Shakespeare to India in the first place. And that’s not to deny that Indian theatre has had huge successes in adapting Shakespeare’s plays to tell Indian history and stories. Let’s just say that the history of getting to that success is fraught. This is why I’m grateful that we have a multicultural cast and production team and are especially featuring Indian actors, choreographers, musicians, and dancers. More than just helping our production achieve authentic Bollywood flair, these artists are offering us an opportunity to learn from their experiences and expertise, no research required.