Do Dramaturges Write Plays? Dramaturgy in Polish Theatre Today
If you look up the word ‘dramaturge’ in a Polish dictionary, you’ll find it described as a person who writes plays. In practice, they work in as many different ways as there are dramaturges – from developing the vision of a theatrical institution to partnering with a director in creating a new performance. In Poland today, dramaturgy holds a unique, anti-authoritarian place in Polish theatre.
‘A pitiful sight’, or dramaturges onstage
The conversation around the profession of dramaturge may feel extremely retro – but intense debate around the function, skills and formalisation of this role in Polish theatre hasn’t been limited to the first two decades of this century. In practice, it goes back much farther. As early as the year 1936, the director Leon Schiller spoke about the need to expand the dramaturge’s competencies and visibility. In doing so, he suggested the elimination of literary offices:
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To look upon the squandering of people who are so cultured, think so creatively and possess an excellent literary education is a pitiful sight. Were it up to us, we’d find a more suitable place for them: onstage, by the director and the actors. May the people of letters who perform the role of dramaturge sit at the table, together with the artists.
Such a call to blur the boundaries of theatre and literature (Schiller called this symbiosis ‘dissipation’) was nothing new at the time – it merely served as a continuation of the theatrical reform which had started at the turn of the 20th century. It’s important to remember that the liberation of the performing arts from drama, the autonomisation of theatre, and the creative ‘invasion’ of literature are not phenomena emerging from new practices, but have taken ever-newer forms within the history of the performing arts.
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Zygmunt Zaleski, Stanisław Czapelski & Leon Schiller, 1930, photo: National Digital Archive / http://www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl
These sorts of reflections about, as Schiller put it, ‘poaching literature for the theatre’ – or on the tensions between ancillary service to the text and author, versus contested rewrites – are quite honest. A much more recent exchange of open letters between Elżbieta Manthey (head of ADiT, the Agencja Dramatu i Teatru, or Drama and Theatre Agency) and Jacek Sieradzki (co-ordinator of the National Competition for the Staging of Contemporary Polish Plays) proves that reality today is certainly capable of reawakening any older artistic discourse from its slumber.
The exchange, which took place last year, involved a clash of two perspectives. One is conservative, encouraging the preservation of drama’s historical importance in the theatre. As Manthey wrote:
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Unfortunately, the dominance of dramaturges prevents the existence of playwrights.
The other is more inclusive, and open to any necessary changes around the role of text in theatre. In response to Manthey’s letter, Sieradzki wrote:
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Contemporary dramaturgy is heteronymous and is borne in various ways.
The claim that dramaturgy constitutes a threat to playwrights is of course quite reactionary, considering the long tradition of freeing theatre from the obligation to present literature, and in accordance with the intent of its author. On the other hand, dramaturgy plays a special role in Polish theatre today – and text, understood as a coherent literary work, is by no means its core interest. To reflect on dramaturgy and the spread of the profession reveals two lines of intent: first, to decentralise the process of working on a performance, and second, to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the creative process.
The first of these relates closely to the tendency to forge a collective, horizontal present in performing arts today, beyond one grounded in the historically well-established – and now absolutely anachronistic – hierarchy, helmed by the director. The dramaturge as creative partner to the director weakens the concentration of power into one person, dilutes this hierarchy and thus becomes an anti-authoritarian phenomenon in itself.
‘The portal’s main goal is to promote collective practice’, we read on the website of the Pracownia Dramaturgyczna (Dramaturgy Workshop) – a think tank founded in 2016 by a group of lecturers and students of the PWST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. Iga Garańczyk, a teacher at the school and a founder of the Pracownia Dramaturgiczna, states in her essay: ‘Truizmy: O Dramaturgii’ (Truisms: On Dramaturgy) that the work of the dramaturge is invisible. The Portal Pracownii (Workshop Portal) – which includes an archive of works and strategies by dramaturges (texts, video, conceptual projects) – stands to increase its visibility, as well as to highlight the autonomy and artistic value of dramaturgical achievements. These are most often interpreted, if they are noticed at all, as part of the work of a director-dramaturge team.
The question of ‘invisible work’ here is not an unfamiliar one. The phenomenon of a failure to perceive certain kinds of work which are difficult to grasp in a material framework is found not only in art, but also in practices such as care work. In the context of dramaturgy, it's important to note that the only awards given for it in Poland are for a standalone text – including the famed Gdyńska Nagroda Dramaturgiczna (Gdynia Dramaturgical Prize) as well as the Aurora award, which was established in 2021 and awarded by the Polski Theatre in Bydgodszcz. The latter is awarded for ‘an outstanding contemporary drama’.
When it comes to Polish theatre festivals, they award prizes for directing, acting and set design. There are none for dramaturgy, if the practice is understood not necessarily as a collection of processes around language, but as one of (co-)creating a script for performance – organising the tensions it contains, working with contemporary contexts beyond the framework of its original presentation, or conducting research. That is to say: for all the work involved in composing a performance and which ultimately constitutes it. Is such work difficult to isolate and evaluate in a way that would make it possible to recognise it with an award? Perhaps. But we could say the same for the work of the director – and awards for directors exist, and contribute to the prestige of theatrical institutions.
We could say that it is possible to see dramaturgy… provided you want to notice it, or learn to. This is certainly also the problem of performing-arts criticism and the way it shapes the image of a performance – and for the sake of economy of language, suggests that a performance should be defined as the work of one person (which obviously contradicts the nature of creating one!). In such a model, success or failure falls upon the director.
To ‘extract’ dramaturgy from a performance, and to analyse it, requires deeper insight, and often watching it several times. Dramaturgy is indeed a net – a weave, if one less ‘visual’ than, for example, stage design.
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Scene from ‘Nad Niemnem: Obrazy z Czasów Pozytywizmu’ (On the Niemen: Images from the Days of Positivism), directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski, 2020, photo: Natalia Kabanów / Osterwy Theatre in Lublin
The aforementioned discussion on the role and skills of the dramaturg, which took place in the first two decades of this century, was related in part to the introduction of the dramaturgy specialisation in the Directing Department of the Kraków theatre school in 2002. And here, we should once invoke Leon Schiller – who, even during the Second World War, was preparing the programme of a Wydział Dramaturgicznego (Dramaturgy Department), which led to its establishment as part of the State Higher Theatre School inaugurated in 1946.
Until recently, on the PWST website, we could read that a dramaturge is a person who ‘supports and guides the director throughout the chain of theatrical activities, from the preparation of the text, through the design of the staging, to the realisation of the performance itself’. Today, such ‘orbiting’ around the director doesn’t seem fully adequate, as dramaturges tend to take on more of a partner role in directing.
More and more often, alongside the model of a tandem with clearly divided responsibilities (for example, Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski, or Wiktor Rubin and Jolanta Janiczak), another model appears – in which the relationship between the director and the dramaturge is not quite so clear. Amongst others, Jędrzej Piaskowski, who works with Hubert Sulima, spoke of this in a conversation with Dominik Gacem:
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The functions of the director and dramaturge are assigned to us systematically – in rehearsal, there’s not such a rigid division. I interfere with the text, and Hubert proposes corrections, doubts or ideas for what’s theatrical. Of course, there are moments when the division returns, because the theatre system is constructed in such a way that in many situations, it’s the director who takes on individual responsibility.
In work carried out in this way, it can clearly be seen that the strengthening of the dramaturge’s position not as (as was often repeated in the closer and more distant past) a ‘third eye’ or ‘first audience member’, but as an equal artistic partner, is a phenomenon that serves to weaken the rhetoric of the director’s ‘master’ role. Dialogue-oriented work, carried out based on a division of responsibilities, breaks up the idea of authorship and doesn’t cumulate success into a single given form.
In 2007, in the journal Didaskalia (Stage Directions), the essay ‘Wirus, Strażnik, Negocjator, Partner’ (Virus, Watchman, Negotiator, Partner) compiled various attempts at dramaturgical self-definition – including the ideas of Miron Hakenbeck, who works with Krzysztof Warlikowski; or Dorota Sajewska, who was working with Paweł Miśkiewicz at that time. In the dramaturges’ responses, various terms appear, in addition to those in the essay’s title: ‘someone who negotiates and carries out translations’, ‘surgeon, centre half, metronome’, ‘interlocutor’, ‘moderator’.
Reading this text with the perspective of time is quite interesting. On the one hand, it shows an apparently burning need at the time (much more so than now) to answer the question who, in fact, a dramaturge is, and what their role is in the process of the performance might be; this became a fundamental part of the conversation on contemporary theatre. On the other hand, we can draw the conclusion that there are as many definitions of the term ‘dramaturg’ as there are dramaturges themselves – and that to this day, their function has been neither singularly nor definitively defined (and rightly so).
It’s possible, however, to refer to the word’s Greek etymology, which combines the words ‘drama’, indicating ‘action’, and ‘tourgos’, derived from ‘ergo’, or work. A dramaturg, then, is someone who works with action, with what is happening in the moment. This etymology seems particularly appropriate if we look at the practice – popular in dramaturgy now – of writing the text during the process, over the course of a collaborative creation, as well as on the canvas of improvisation. When there’s a lack of a strong literary foundation, the work begins in a creative void – where it’s unknown what will slowly take shape and be filled with meanings through collective work on the performance.
Another strategy aims to create a script according to the model which Piotr Gruszczyński, the dramaturge at Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Nowy Theatre, named a ‘multi-channel installation’. Though this approach, a script is created by arranging a series of diverse texts through intuitive combination. ‘It’s difficult to explain what paths the search for these texts have taken’, Gruszczyński admitted, describing his work on A Streetcar Named Desire at the Paris Odéon.
Dramaturgical ‘betrayal’ committed towards the coherence of a text is an inevitable element of the process we might call ‘updating’ that text – softening it, enriching it with the living contexts present in its discourse, and opening it up to their possibilities. Its adaptation to the realities of the present moment. As we read in the expansion of the word ‘dramaturgy’ in the book Performatyka: Terytoria (Performatics: Territories), edited by Dariusz Kosiński and Ewa Bal:
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In this way, the center of gravity shifts from the artifact itself – which previously, was most often the text of a drama – to an examination of one’s own relationship to it, to the development of a reflection upon its impact, to the search for a dramatic moment contained within it.
Yet another question is the difference between the function of a dramaturge employed for the long term (often defined as a literary director) and that of a dramaturge who works with a director on a freelance basis. Current examples of the first include Piotr Gruszczyński at Nowy Theatre, Tomasz Jękot at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych, and Michał Kurkowski at the Wybrzeże Theatre; in the past, there were Marzena Sadocha at the Polski Theatre in Wrocław or Dorota Sajewska at the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw. As a permanent function at a theatre, dramaturgy is also associated with responsibility for the shape and direction of the repertoire, and bringing a coherent – we might say curatorial – shape to the institution itself.
Without a doubt, the role of institutional dramaturge has been strengthened by the tendency to open up more to the audience, and to invest energy and resources in activities not directly related to the production and presentation of performances: educational practices, workshops and interdisciplinary activities. What’s more, a change in the paradigm of theatrical reception from safe and passive to active and engaged has changed the dramaturge’s role – which can also be defined as the art of composing an entire performative event, separate from the weight of a given text. In this sense, dramaturges are growing in importance not only at repertory theatres, but also in the wider performing arts – including new performance practices and choreography.
So, do dramaturges write plays? Not necessarily, although some dictionaries might say so. But the real definitions of the term are made in rehearsal rooms, on stages. This is where dramaturgy is truly developing. Perhaps it’s most interesting to think of dramaturgy as a paradigm of interdisciplinary work – where the challenges of constructing a concise, unambiguous definition can be an advantage. We can think of it as a role which reflects the multidimensionality of theatre itself, in which working with images, words, presence, light, meanings, rhythm and silence all combine into a single process, but with numerous authors.
Originally written in Polish, Apr 2021, translated by Lauren Dubowski, Jul 2021
Sources: ‘Dramaturgia’ by W. Baluch, in ‘Performatyka: Terytoria’ ed. by Dariusz Kosiński, Ewa Bal, (Kraków 2017); ‘Ale Dramaturg, Kim on Jest’ by R. Węgrzyniak, in ‘Notatnik Teatralny’ nr 58-59/2010; ‘Wirus, Strażnik, Negocjator, Partner’ by J. Targoń in ‘Didaskalia’ nr 2/2007; ‘Truizmy O Dramaturgii’ by I. Gańczarczyk, in ‘Didaskalia’ nr 151-152/2019; pracownia.ast.krakow.pl; ‘Referat Programowy Nadzwyczajnego Zjazdu ZASP’ by L. Schiller, https://issuu.com/instytut.teatralny/docs/leon_schiller; ‘Adaptacja: Adaptacja Wielokanałowa i Adaptacja Jako Instalacja’ by P. Gruszczyński, in ‘Zeszyty Naukowe AST (Kraków 2018); encyklopediateatru.pl; ‘Warszawa Jest Bańką’, conversation between Jędrzej Piaskowski and Dominik Gac on teatralny.pl; e-teatr.pl; dziennikteatralny.pl