Zachariah Ezer: Hi, I’m Zachariah Ezer, he/him/his, and I’m in Brooklyn, New York. 

Liz Engelman:  Hi, I’m Liz Engelman, I use the she suite of pronouns, and I split my time between Minneapolis and Ely, Minnesota. 

Julie Felise Dubiner: Hi, I’m Julie Felise Dubiner, and I am in Princeton, New Jersey. 

Gaven Trinidad: Hi, my name is Gaven, rhymes with raven. I use they/them pronouns. And I am Zooming from the Lower East Side, New York, where I was born and raised.

Jordan Ealey: Hello, my name is Jordan Ealey. My pronouns are they/them and she/her. I am in Rochester, New York, on the land of the Haudenosaunee and Seneca peoples. And I’m delighted to be here in this room of dramaturgs. This doesn’t happen often. [Laughter]

Deborah Zoe Laufer: And I’m Deb Laufer, Zooming in from Mount Kisco, NY, and I use she/her pronouns. 

I just want to tell you really quickly why we’re doing this: when Morgan Jenness died, there was such an outpouring of love on social media. We were discussing her passing at The Dramatist Committee meeting (of the Dramatists Guild), and I was surprised to learn that many of these seasoned writers had never worked with a dramaturg, some were unsure what a dramaturg’s role was, and that there was some fear or resentment that only playwrights are given an “assist.” 

We decided to devote an issue to what dramaturgs do, who they are, and why we shouldn’t be afraid of them. [Laughter] I’ll just ask where you work and what you do as a dramaturg, and then leave it as an open conversation. 

Liz Engelman: Currently, I’m the Founder and Executive Director of Tofte Lake Center, which is an artist retreat center adjacent to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. We’re celebrating our seventeenth season this year.

After a several-decades career of dramaturgy that was pretty text-specific and play-centered, I guess I’ve expanded into working with artists from a variety of disciplines—talking with them about what story they’re trying to tell with the work that they’re making, whatever the genre.

Beyond a play, beyond a text, whatever art that an artist is making, there is a conversation with an audience. What kind of conversation do they want their work to have with their audience, and how can I be a sounding board for that intention?

I work with artists to discover and uncover what they are trying to say, what they are trying to communicate, what story they’re telling through their art, and how can I help ensure that this story is being received, that the communication is clear, that they’re saying what they want to say. 

Deborah Zoe Laufer: I think there’s some suspicion that dramaturgs are there to get you to rewrite the play so the artistic director is happy.  I’ve experienced what you describe: having a sounding board to make sure I’m telling the story I want to tell.

Zach, do you want to say where you work as a dramaturg? 

Zachariah Ezer: Sure. Right now, I teach playwriting at Washington University in Saint Louis, so I guess you could say that I’m doing a lot of new works stuff right now. I used to run incubators at Keen Company and The Workshop Theater, and I also freelance. I’ve done a little bit of revival work, but I mostly do new play dramaturgy, and I’m very interested in being the first audience member for a play. The way I talk about dramaturgy—I’m teaching a dramaturgy class for the first time in the fall, actually—is kind of one-third story and structure work, one-third research, and one-third what I call “vibes curation.”

Deborah Zoe Laufer: Okay, excellent. And Julie?

Julie Felise Dubiner: Hm, I never know where to start. [Laughs] I’m old now, so, there have been a lot of places. Right now, I’m on staff at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, and my job is Director of Artistic Initiatives. Which means I’m sort of the house dramaturg for shows that are coming in. I work on season selection; I make myself a bit of a pain in the neck trying to "dramaturg" the institution. And before that, I was at Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a long time, running or co-running the American Revolutions new play commissioning program.

And hopefully, once we get fundraising going here, I’ll be running a big commissioning program here, as well. And I think that’s enough. I mean, I’m happy to go on at length about myself, but I think that’s enough. I will send it to Gaven, again, my follow-me friend. [Laughter]

Gaven Trinidad: Thank you, Julie. I started my career as a dramaturg, and I mostly focus on works of people of color in new play development. I’ve worked with folks like Ma-Yi Theater, Ping Chong Company, Yangtze Repertory Theatre, and artists such as Roger Q. Mason, Yilong Liu, Amanda Andrei, to name a few. I was mentored by dramaturgs and scholars Dr. Priscilla Page, Harley Erdman, Megan Lewis, Chris Baker, and Talvin Wilks. I’m in that deep tradition of developing works by people of color. For the past five-and-a-half years, I’ve been back in New York, using my dramaturgy as the Community Engagement Coordinator at New York Theatre Workshop. I am now the new Marketing Manager of Audience and Community Engagement at Signature Theatre Company.

I strongly believe that a dramaturg is also a generative artist who is vital to create the shared artistic language of all of the many collaborative artists in a room. Something that Zachariah was saying was the vibe check, right? Making sure you also hold that space, that there is this discourse and conversation amongst all the folks in the room. 

But also, my joy as a dramaturg is to find ways to activate other artists, as Liz said, through whatever medium of art they use to express themselves. I have done things like create collages with a playwright to understand how their play is evolving. I’ve gone to dance classes with a director who wanted to make their artists move, but they themselves did not know how to embody that.

Jordan Ealey: Oh, so inspiring already. So, where am I—in my mind or physically? No, I’m just kidding. [Laughter] I am an assistant professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester, so right now is a very fun time for us, as you can imagine. I got a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Maryland before going into my job in Black Studies. And I enjoy very much being the artsy theatre kid in my department, and I always say Black theatre is Black life.

So, making sure that the stories of so many Black theatre artists, many of whom are some of the foremost thinkers and philosophers—a lot of them wrote plays, a lot of them were involved in theatre. A lot of them were doing something that we might consider dramaturgy, even if it’s not always designated as such, within our normative understanding of what dramaturgy is. So, I try to bring that perspective within my departments and in the field of Black Studies.

In terms of being a dramaturg, my background in performing arts is in dance. I came to theatre through dance. I still kind of consider myself a dancer, even though I haven’t danced in fifteen years. 

Working from a piece that had no text was some of the best preparation I have ever had in being a dramaturg. Because it forced me to engage with the work in ways that didn’t rely on the written word, which was just so enriching to the work that I do now.
I’ve primarily worked in new work and lately musicals more so than ever, too. As a researcher, one of my specialties is Black musical theatre. I’m currently writing a book on Black women’s musical theatre, and looking into the history has been such a joy. And I get to work with so many amazing generative artists around musical theatre, so that has been a huge part of my dramaturgical journey.

Another part of my dramaturgy world—I have a podcast called Daughters of Lorraine, which is with HowlRound, and it’s giving a Black feminist perspective to Black theatre. And in addition to interviews with contemporary Black theatre artists, we do history episodes where we delve into specific topics. So, what does reproductive justice look like in Black theatre? What are anti-lynching dramas and the history of that?

Deborah Zoe Laufer: That’s great. Thank you all. I’m fascinated—it sounds like you work with everyone in the room, Gaven, which sounds very exciting. I’ve worked with both Liz and Julie, and they were both very playwright-centered in their work. Julie was sort of protecting me, actually, in a very quick rehearsal process with a very new play. We had discussed, in depth, what I wanted the play to be. And she had a really deep understanding of it and was my ally in the room during the rehearsal process.

And Liz has worked with me on a couple of festivals where I was bringing in new plays to workshop. I was stuck and hadn’t finished the play and had, like, three days to do that. Liz asked me the kind of questions that made me excited to go write.
Those are my main experiences. Also, do you work with Ring of Keys, Jordan? I hired someone from Ring of Keys for a project and had a fantastic experience. That’s another way I’ve found a dramaturg to be extremely helpful—when I’m writing about a culture that isn’t mine. You just don’t know what you don’t know. 

I would love to hear from all of you how you like to work with playwrights, and if there are specific methods you have, just so that playwrights who haven’t worked with a dramaturg have some idea of what it might look like.

Liz Engelman: I love hearing how all of us really are coming at this in our own ways. I mean, we may be doing some of the same things, but we branch out in different directions. There’s a misunderstanding, sometimes, in the hiring of a dramaturg. We all know that you audition actors to get the ones that you want and that you think will be great fits for your play. You also have interviews or conversations with directors to make sure they’re the right collaborative partner, and to choose designers who are going to see the play in the same way you do. And then it’s, like, “okay, now let’s get a dramaturg,” as if all the dramaturgs are the same. I just love how different we all are. I’m less of a researcher, less of an historical context-bringer to a room, I’m more focused on asking the earlier formative questions of a playwright, really trying to tease out, “what are you trying to do and make?” I’m most useful in the earlier stages when the playwright is still discovering the play that will then one day be in a room and shared with other collaborators—and eventually an audience.  I’m also helpful in the very beginning of the rehearsal process, making sure that playwright and director are on the same page regarding the story that they want to tell, and as the actors start to tell that three-dimensionally. Then, for me, my job starts to recede, and the play and the production and process drive off without me. 

Julie Felise Dubiner: It’s so dependent on where you are and when you are, and I find as I’m getting older my practice is changing, too. It’s funny that you mentioned being a protector, but I really bristle when people call us midwives or doulas, in particular, [laughs] especially since I had a kid, I’m just, like, “No, no, no, it’s not that.”

I prefer to think of it more like Virgil: “I am your guide in Hell right now.” Like, “I know how to work the copier. I know how to clear the jam. I know why people are asking you that question right now. I know where the good bathroom is. I know where the good place to cry is. I know where the good bourbon is.” These are the things that are part of my job. 

[When] I went to OSF, my job changed completely. Because it was really mostly an office job—to read as many plays as I could, every year, trying to find writers to commission for this big history project. 

Sort of guessing whether somebody could tell a big epic story or not, right? So, I was in at the very, very beginning when someone first got contracted to take a commission. And then I didn’t come back until later, if that person wanted me as a dramaturg. To Liz’s point earlier, when I got to OSF, I fought very hard to make sure that nobody was stuck with me as their dramaturg. Not that I’m not awesome [laughs], but I’m not right for everybody.

Not everybody likes me. I know, it’s shocking. I’m not right for every project; I’m not right for every playwright. I’m always so grateful when I meet people like Deb, who I felt an immediate affinity for the minute I met her. But to a large extent, my skill set, I am actually a really good researcher. But I’m also a little prickly and a little impatient, and that doesn’t sit well with some people who want to talk for hours about a comma. I’m not the comma person. But if the writer needs a comma person, the writer should have what the writer needs. 

I’ve also had projects where halfway through, we realized we weren’t the right person for each other, and so, I’ll step off, because—I know dramaturgs don’t like to hear this—but it’s not important for me to be in the room if I’m not wanted. I can’t actually help you if you don’t want me there, so I’ll leave. I’ve got plenty to do and it’s fine. I’m not leaving in a huff. Actually, that was something I remember talking to Morgan about: you can’t be necessary if you’re not wanted.

That has been a real truth in the jobs I’ve had since I left [The Actors Theatre of] Louisville. Louisville is very different now than it was when I was there, but at that time when I left, I was like, “I will never force anyone to work with me again. I will never force anyone to work with anyone again.” And I have been able to keep that promise in the next two institutions that I’ve been in.

Zachariah Ezer: A thing I’ve noticed, given some of the things you’re saying, Julie, is that when I feel like it’s being done correctly, when I’m being hired as a dramaturg, I’m being hired similarly to how a designer is being hired. Around the time that the production is putting the core creative team together, they’re saying, “All right, let’s think about the dramaturg.” 

And we operate, in some ways, in a similar manner that someone like a sound designer does. i.e., the playwright writes the play and writes where a sound might be or even what that sound is, and then a sound designer brings that to life. Text design, if there is such a thing, is what I feel like I do. The playwright wrote the characters, the story, what the play is. But I’m able to take a step back and consider if it’s doing all of the things that the writer wants it to do. And if it’s not, how can we talk about that with the director, and then with the designers and the actors, to make sure that the piece is happening the way that the playwright wants? 

I feel like there’s a bit of a sea change in dramaturgy. I also think that institutional versus freelance dramaturgy is interesting, because so often, the institutional dramaturg is a literary manager of the theatre, and it becomes a matter of engaging with your institution, if you have the ability and they have the budget to do so, to say, “I shouldn’t be the dramaturg for everything.” Like you all have been saying, you may not always be the person to do this, but as an institutional dramaturg, which I have been infrequently, I am able to ask, “How do we find that right person?”

Gaven Trinidad: I think there’s a misunderstanding, as we’re all saying, of what we do. And not understanding that what we do as dramaturgs is a craft. In many ways, we’re hired as researchers, but others do not necessarily know how our artistry and our understanding of so many disciplines and topics all wrap around the elements of a play. Luckily, I’ve found collaborators who take me in and know that. They’ve brought me into the marketing meetings, engagement meetings, even casting.   

Right now, I’m working with two companies, ironically, as the playwright, but in the top billing for Company One and Chuang Stage, it’s always the playwright, director, and dramaturg. They never forget to put the dramaturg, knowing how key they are in shaping a production. 

And that, as Zachariah was saying, we have an artistic craft like a designer. They’ve taken time to make their voice distinguishable, their own, but also, we all do it, too. We’re all not cookie-cutter. What we’ve done in our career is create an artistry for ourselves. 

For example, when I was saying I bring the director out to a dance class, it’s because I know that particular artist would be receptive to that. It’s because I have that vibe check with them, I know how to activate that artist. Not all artists are open to that kind of dramaturgy work, so maybe those are not the folks I work with, but we find different ways; it is that matchmaking. But I truly thrive as a dramaturg with someone who wants to push themselves as an artist. I love working with designers, too. 

One of my favorites is a designer named Christina Beam. She was learning about drag culture and the kiki scene as we were working on a new production of Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge at UMass Amherst. So, I came and was, like, “Hey, let’s sit down. What are your dreams? What are the stories you’re telling?” I brought in the history of the drag houses, and I quoted Lady Gaga [laughs], a drag queen’s or a drag performer’s story begins with their silhouette as they walk through the door.  

Once you see that silhouette in that frame, you know the story that you’re getting. And that kind of conversation with designers opens up a lot, and then you see it in the work. This conversation is also with our director, who then said, “Ah, this is the way I have to introduce this character.” That’s the fun part about these dramaturgical puzzles. And then we were staging in the round, so what does it mean for the audiences to be in conversation with performers and the text being only a few feet away? 

As a dramaturg, it’s those kinds of conversations that are so exciting to me. I forgot what the question was, but that’s where it went. [Laughs]

Deborah Zoe Laufer: That is a perfect answer, thank you.

Jordan Ealey: My main mentor, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, sees dramaturgy as artistic advocacy. And I think that’s been the ethos that I have driven. Whenever I’m in a new process, I always introduce myself like, “I’m a dramaturg, AKA the playwright’s bestie.” I wear that title very well. But also, I remember I got onto a new musical and the director came up to me and was like, “You know, directors and dramaturgs, we’re always pitted against each other, but I don’t want us to be enemies. I want us to be friends.”  

It was hilarious, but it was also amazing to have that, and I think it really healed my relationship with directors. Because she did make it a priority to be like, “I want us to work closely together, because we’re both bringing something very different to this experience.” And I think that goes with Faedra’s understanding of dramaturgy as artistic advocacy, because it’s what is best for all of the artists in the room. 

How can we all come to some sort of agreement, compromise, whatever it is, to what is going to serve what we’re all doing here. Whether it’s a production, a reading, a development, a scene, how can we advocate for the art but also, obviously, keep ourselves, as human beings, a part of that, too. And I think that’s also my approach. I was giving a guest lecture talk to a friend’s class on dramaturgy, and one of the students asked me, “What is the most underrated skill that you use as a dramaturg?” 

And my answer to the student was people skills. When I hear Julie, when I hear Zachariah, when I hear Gaven, when I hear Liz, I hear us talking about how we deal with human beings. And I say this as someone—not to throw shade, but as someone who also works in academia, people who are researchers and professors fancy themselves being able to do dramaturgy because of that, [and] it’s not the same thing as being able to pull something out of a text and being able to deliver that specific note or have that conversation. Know[ing] when to give a note to an artist is not the same as being able to know what note to give, if that makes sense.

Julie Felise Dubiner: That makes so much sense. [Laughter]

Jordan Ealey: That’s also something I talk about regularly with my mentor—being people who straddle both the professional industry and the academic world. Dramaturgy is an art. We are artists, we got into this because we are creative people, right? And it’s such a different skill that I have to tap into than the work that I do as a scholar and researcher.  

Again, not to poopoo on my peers, because I understand it’s all important, but it requires such a different level of sensitivity, relationality, and community building that is not always apparent in research.

Julie Felise Dubiner: What you were saying, Jordan, is so important—when I had interns in Louisville, part of my big philosophy was to tell them to wait for it: “Find the moment. Wait for it.” 

And I can’t explain it, I can’t write a textbook on how to do it, but how to figure out that right moment when Deb is prime to hear that Scene Two is five minutes too long. Is it the right moment where she can hear me without feeling like she’s being criticized or hurt in some way? You know, some people, I imagine, are born diplomatic. I was not. 

So, to figure out how to actually read the room, and also take that time to get to know that person enough so that you can figure it out. That’s a part that’s gotten easier for me as I’ve gotten more experience. I’m less afraid of pissing people off than I used to be, and I have some credibility now, I guess, or maybe I’ve bestowed myself with some. I’m not sure. Ask me tomorrow. 

Or maybe I’ve just gotten better at it as I’ve gone on. But that sense of finding that moment where you can actually be of service to the play, in addition to being of service to the playwright.

Liz Engelman: Yeah, just to piggyback on that, to “dramaturg” the patterns we’ve been raising… a dramaturg can do research, but doing research doesn’t mean it’s dramaturgy. The research, the actor packet, is this noun, is this thing, but applying it, to your example, Gaven, bringing in the history of the drag houses, that’s applying the research, that’s the verb of it, where it becomes active and impacts the production, versus, like, “Oh, I plop this big binder down and that’s my dramaturgy.” Research and dramaturgy are two different things.

Every day, there’s a new metaphor for what dramaturgy is, there’s a new definition. For me, I don’t know if it’s an art, I don’t know if it’s a craft. I know it’s a skill, I know it’s a perspective, to your point, Jordan, and I know it’s a process. To echo your point about the soft people skills, dramaturgy is how to have a conversation. It all starts with a conversation: “What are our expectations going into this together? Dramaturgy can mean all these things—you might want some, all, or none of these things. What are we agreeing upon?” 

It was mentioned earlier that you can do a reading at a theatre and the expectations are different from both the theatre and the playwright sides: is the reading the play’s audition for the season, or is it to support the playwright’s developing of the play? If we don’t have those conversations up front, we pay for it later. Who are we “serving,” if we even use that word “serve,” which sometimes gives me the creeps. We must ask, “What are we doing, why are we doing it, and who are we doing this for?” 

Being clear about who we’re advocating for, what we’re advocating for, and when we advocate for it is big for me. Are we transmitting the artistic director’s notes to the playwright even though we might not agree with them? In that case, are we working for the institution’s agenda? Are we working for the playwright and being that playwright’s bestie? Or are we the play’s bestie? Sometimes that can become a tension point with the playwright—the moment where we transition from, “You know, I’m here for you. I’m advocating. I’m cheerleading. I know and support what you want to do with your play,” to “I see what your play wants to be and maybe you don’t see it. I’m advocating for your play to you, not only advocating for you to somebody else.” 

Zachariah Ezer: Talking a little more about the packet, I think that a lot of people are kind of obsessed with it, especially when they’re hiring and thinking about how to pay people. And that’s not exactly how it works. I think that’s maybe the place that we are a little different from a designer. Instead of presenting a concept or a set design that’s going to be eventually actualized—dramaturgs can do packets, and I think everyone here is very capable of making an amazing packet, but that’s not the core of what we do. 

I was thinking about the distinction between a researcher and an expert. I feel like we’re not always researchers, but to think about what Gaven was talking about, sometimes we are subject experts. And that’s part of the chemistry and the matchmaking. I remember the first dramaturgy gig I ever did was a workshop at the National Black Theatre, and it was specifically to analyze some of the psychoanalysis stuff that Alice Childress was thinking about in a couple of her plays. I had never done any dramaturgy, I didn’t really know anything about the craft, the skill, whatever we decided to call it. 

The learning curve for me ended up being what we’ve been talking about here: people skills. The people who were my early mentors, some of them were community organizers (shoutout Nissy Aya), before they became dramaturgs. Specifically, those dealing with conflict resolution and understanding how people are going to behave in group settings are the things that became important to take me from a researcher or a subject expert to being able to three-dimensionalize this whole job, or at least much more of it. 

I do think that, to Liz’s point, dramaturgy does come from all these different things, and because it’s so amorphous, it can absorb, from different fields and subject specialties, different skills and aspects of the job that make each individual dramaturg have varied skills that playwrights and institutions should be considering when trying to pick and match a play/playwright to a dramaturg.

Julie Felise Dubiner: One of the things that has really changed in institutions right now, and some of it is silly and I fight against it. But there is a sense of a deliverable, which is a term that never used to exist in an arts organization. I remember having to ask somebody what that meant, when I first heard it. But the actor packet—or I like to call it resource materials—but those resource material packets, those newsletter articles, all those things that are really important to an institution, but maybe not as important as they should be, it becomes quantifiable.

So, I would encourage playwrights who are looking to hire dramaturgs, especially dramaturgs from outside of an institution, to understand where a theatre is or where one of these institutions is in that conversation around how you describe deliverables and what remains the property of the dramaturg.

Gaven Trinidad: What I kept thinking after you all shared is that, in grad school, when we go through the definitions of a dramaturg, we’d make a word cloud. A description that came up for my cohort was dramaturg as artistic therapist. People will sometimes turn to the dramaturg as that person to just talk through something, through maybe a hard process, or even a great process.

Liz Engelman: How do you feel about that? Just kidding. [Laughter]

Gaven Trinidad: In my experience or education of dramaturgy, I was never paired with a playwright. I was always paired with a director. Even now, I’m often brought into rooms because of a director’s request. And there’s always that probation period in a rehearsal, where everyone’s trying to size you up and figure out your relationship, just given people’s assumptions of dramaturgs.  

But I gotta say, I love making the packets, because I ask that the director and playwright participate with me. Because they have to have this emotional investment in that packet, and they know more about the piece than I do in a very different way. I was a public school teacher, and I love lesson planning and scaffolding, and so, working with a director and playwright, it’s like, “Okay, when throughout the process can we feed more information to the actors?” 

And as Julie said, this then helps the artist make artistic choices. How can we make that tangible to them? For some work I was like, “Yeah, you could give all of the history in the beginning, but is that going to help the artist in the room at that very moment?” and trying to time when to do that. I work very closely with a director and playwright on planning that out, and then allowing me to intentionally come in to then say, “This is the point that would help this current process.”
Also, I make them do wild things. In addition to that packet, I also ask them, “Make a playlist. Let’s do all of these exercises, so that all of the artists in the room and the designers, and even stage managers, know where you are in your thinking.” I asked a playwright who is not a visual artist to draw something inspired by the play, and, voila, everyone understood, “This is what this play is about.” [Laughs] It truly opened up the world to all of the other collaborators. 

And so, that’s my joy—and I just keep pushing people—that’s my joy of being a dramaturg. [Laughs] It’s art therapy in a way.

Deborah Zoe Laufer: I should’ve known that, having a bunch of dramaturgs, it would go seamlessly from person to person without me doing very much. So, thank you all. Are there any last thoughts?

Liz Engelman: Yeah, Deb, I would say for the people out there who are still scared of us [laughs]… (I thought we were done with that, but I guess things can circle back around), whether it be a playwright or director, thinking a dramaturg is there to challenge them negatively, or to intentionally poke holes in the work they are making, as if there’s something flawed from the get-go… I’d say to them: This couldn’t be further from the truth. With investment and trust and support and good will, we are committed to making the process and product the best that it can be. 

We’re not coming in trying to shoot their work down. We’re actually trying to lift it up and hold it up to its best self, which is what we’re all working toward. We’ve said yes to something because we believe in it, we believe in the play, we believe in the relationship, we believe in the artist; there’s a reason we’ve said yes. We’re not gunning to come in and be, like, “Let’s show everyone how much smarter we are, and tell them how it should be.” Rather than being the smartest one in the room, I try to be one of the most open and unattached to outcome– the one always ready to ask the honest, open, ego-less question. 

So, for those scared people, I’d say: change the fear to excitement. Think instead, “Wow, I’ve got somebody whom I can turn to”—whether therapist or guide or bestie or person in the passenger seat—whom you can ask, or can ask you,  “are we going in the right direction?” We all have that bestie (Hi, Julie!) to whom we can say, “I have a challenging conversation tomorrow. Can I talk it through with you first? What should I say? How will that come across? What do you think?”  We all want, and seek, that sounding board, having that person that’s genuinely trying to help, not hurt. To me, that’s dramaturgy. What are you trying to communicate, and how to do it best?

Deborah Zoe Laufer: Yeah, that’s very much my experience. It’s like my writer’s group; they know what I want to write. I’ve talked about it a million times, and when I bring things in and I’m a little lost, they remind me what I’ve said, what story I’m telling. Having that support in the rehearsal room is very meaningful.

Jordan Ealey: Yeah, I fancy myself that kind of person, as well. That’s why I like the word “advocate,” and no shade to the therapist [laughs] word, but I was like, “We don’t get paid enough to be therapists.” No, I’m just kidding. [Laughter] I’m not kidding. 

There is something so special about really focusing specifically on something like new work. Like, this is your baby that’s probably only lived in your Google Docs or maybe a small reading in your living room, that you’re now bringing out into the world and you’re letting people hold it for the first time. 

Even though it’s just been you in your little bubble talking about it—sorry to go back to doula work. But, still, you have opened up this very new and scary thing. And I take that process to be incredibly sacred. And it’s also why I love theatre so much. I love plays, I love playwrights, and I love working with works that don’t quite know what they are yet, because I know that we’re gonna find out what it’s going to be. 

That’s one of the best parts of working on a new play, specifically, is there was not anything there, or maybe there was a scrap of a thing there, and then it became something. And it’s gonna blossom and grow and bloom, and I get to have been a part of this process that helped you discover whatever you felt like you couldn’t do. One of the things that I would always say is, “I’m here to help you get away from your limits.” 

I am there to help you understand that you don’t have limits. There may be budgetary concerns or whatever, blah blah blah, but if we’re in a reading, girl, we don’t have a production anyway. So, you should go ahead and just dream about what this play or this production or this choreography or whatever could be. I’m here to help you to do that, because I see something there. I want you to also see that thing there. 

Another thing I always say to people is, “I’m not gonna tell you your play is bad.” I think sometimes there are some playwrights who actually want you to be tough on them, “Be tough on me. Say what you really think.” And it’s like, “Can you just believe that I think it’s really good? I actually really do think it’s good. Obviously, maybe there are some things you need to work on, there’s some places to go, but I believe in you and I believe in this play. And I really do think it’s good, even if it’s not where you want it to be.”

Julie Felise Dubiner: Being a storyteller right now feels very important, and being able to help people shape and tell the story that they want to tell feels more important than ever. And that can be text or movement or music—like, what is the thing that you want to tell? A lifeguard was my favorite metaphor. I’m there to watch you swim, and I need to be able to tell whether you’re waving or drowning. And if I come out to save you, you have to let me help you, because otherwise we both drown. 

Zachariah Ezer:  Absolutely. I think the wonderful thing about storytelling is that it creates, in the writer, such a beautiful myopia where they get to totally be obsessed with their world. I’m also a playwright, so I definitely get like that. So, the best thing about being a dramaturg, and what I like in dramaturgs when I’m working with them as a playwright, is being somebody who gets to, for a moment, step one foot into the world with them, but still retain an outside perspective at the same time. 

I once worked on a play about Dungeons and Dragons, and we taught a bunch of actors how to play. And being able to do that, the playwright and I working together, helping these people learn how to play this game, felt like a good metaphor for dramaturgy. Together, we as the creative team are going to engage in this collective experience with a group of people. And doing that is gonna bring great joy and meaning to everyone involved, but maybe none more so than the playwright who sees their world come to life, and—as a dramaturg—I get to facilitate that.

Deborah Zoe Laufer: Thank you all. I wish I had more time to talk with you. This was fantastic. Nobody will be afraid of dramaturgs anymore.

Julie Felise Dubiner: Well, maybe a little afraid. I don’t want to dispel all of it.