dramaturgy

Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Some dramatists combine writing and dramaturgy when creating a drama. Others work with a specialist, called a dramaturg, to adapt a work for the stage.

Dramaturgy may also be defined, more broadly, as shaping a story into a form that may be acted. Dramaturgy gives the work or the performance a structure.

History of dramaturgy

In western canon the seminal work is the Poetics by Aristotle (written around 335 BCE). In this work Aristotle analyses tragedy. He considers Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) as the quintessential dramatic work. He analyses the relations between character, action, and speech. He gives examples of what he considers to be good plots and examines the reactions the plays provoke in the audience. Many of his "rules" are often associated with "Aristotelian drama", where deus ex machina is a weakness and where the action is structured economically. Many key concepts of drama, such as anagnorisis and catharsis, are discussed in the Poetics. In the last century Aristotle's analysis has formed the basis for numerous TV and film-writing guides. The Poetics is the earliest surviving Western work of dramatic theory. Many directors and playwrights have since written about their own dramaturgical thinking, including Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, and David Mamet.

Copyright

Since dramaturgy is defined in a general way and the function of a dramaturg may vary from production to production, the US copyright issues have very vague borders.

In 2006, there was debate based on the question of the extent to which a dramaturg owns a production, such as the case of Larson and Thomson. Lynn Thomson, Jonathan Larson's dramaturg on the musical Rent, claimed that she was a co-author of the work and that she never assigned, licensed or otherwise transferred her rights. She asked that the court declare her a co-author of Rent and grant her 16% of the author's share of the royalties. Although she made her claim only after the show became a big hit, the case is not without precedent, for 15% of the royalties of Angels in America go to the author's dramaturg. On June 19, 1998 the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the original court's ruling that Thompson was not entitled to be credited with co-authorship ofRent and that she was not entitled to royalties.

External links

• A Brief History of Hollywood Dramaturgy and Modern Screenplay Structure
• Dramaturgy Northwest
• Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas
• Dramaturgs' network, dramaturgy in the UK