Alternate Stages
Weekly show about live theatre and those who keep it afloat in the current digital tidal wave of digital-streaming substitutes, hosted by actor/playwright Rob Armstrong Martin
Alternate Stages
A Dramaturg by Any Other Name, with Lenora Inez Brown
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Lenora Inez Brown is an accomplished American theatre professional, dramaturg, and arts administrator with over two decades of experience. She is the author of two industry-standard books: The Art of Active Dramaturgy (2010) and New Play Development (2015). Her distinguished career includes serving as the former Head of Dramaturgy at DePaul University, Interim Executive Director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and Director of New Plays for the Crossroads Theatre Company.
Lenora holds degrees from Dartmouth, the Yale School of Drama, and Cleveland State University, and is noted for her pivotal role in launching Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice and her work at the Sundance Theatre Labs. She emphasizes leveraging dramaturgical training for executive leadership and arts philanthropy. Lenora currently serves as Executive Director for Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.
Books:
Contributor to: Decades of Modern American Drama Volume 6: Playwriting in the 1960s "Adrienne Kennedy" published by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama
NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT: Facilitating Creativity for Dramaturgs, Playwrights, and Everyone Else, Lenora Inez Brown. (2015) Hackett Publishing.
THE ART OF ACTIVE DRAMATURGY: Transforming Critical Thought into Dramatic Action, Lenora Inez Brown. (2010) Hackett Publishing.
Support the show and get access to members-only bonus episodes!
If you're a paid subscriber, you'll have access to bonus episodes, including Snippets, a brand new plays created by community writers. Sign up for the paycheck now. Don't miss the words.
SPEAKER_00This interview was originally recorded August 13th, 2025.
SPEAKER_02My guest this week is Lenora Inez Brown. Lenora Inez Brown is an accomplished American theater professional, dramaturg, and arts administrator with over two decades of experience. She is the author of two industry standard books, The Art of Active Dramaturgy, published in 2010, and New Play Development, published in 2015. Lenora's distinguished career includes serving as the former head of dramaturgy at DePaul University, Interim Executive Director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and Director of New Plays for the Crossroads Theatre Company. Brown holds degrees from Dartmouth, the Yale School of Drama, and Cleveland State University, and is noted for her pivotal role in launching Sarah Rule's Eurydice and her work at the Sundance Theater Labs. Lenora emphasizes leveraging dramaturgical training for executive leadership and arts philanthropy. Lenora and I have known each other since we were undergraduates together at Dartmouth College in the 1980s, and we were chatting just before this interview about our experience in medical education institutions as administrators and faculty members.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. I mean, my great-grandfather was a doctor, my cousin is a doctor. Well, he just retired. His daughter's a doctor. A lot of my great uncles were physicians. I mean, there's but it's like it's like skipped many generations. I don't know. I'm I'm hoping my I'm hoping I'm hoping one of my nieces who who has my dad's mic microscope now, I'm hoping that her curiosity is such that she will want to be a physician. It would she's also named after my dad, so that may also be in her mind, but it would just be weird in our family, you know, tonight. Yeah. But, you know, that's neither here nor there. But to get to dramaturgy, a lot of what we just did is dramaturgy, you know, listening to somebody, uh at least in the kind of dramaturgy that I practiced, which was new play development, is is really listening to what they're saying and thinking about options. And even if you're you haven't, you don't have experience in the field that they're exploring, it's about listening to how they talk about it. And as we mentioned, you used a term that had that was thoroughly appropriate, but has a negative connotation or can be heard to have and and be received as having a negative or stress-inducing conversation, burnout doesn't actually, you know, excite you as opposed to re-engaging and connecting with their passion, which you said when they do research, these this group of people actually stay in their field a lot longer. Well, a topic like that is going to bring bring many people to your table. And it's the same if you're working on developing a new play or even trying to develop a new program or a new direction in your in your theater company, whether it's a community theater company or a professional theater company. It's not ticket sales are down, nobody's coming back after COVID, you know, the insurances are extremely high, we had to put in an air circulating system. So now everything costs like three times as much. Yeah, nobody's going to be inspired to think their best thoughts with those real truths running around their brain at 50 miles an hour. But the idea of why you started the theater in the first place, why you're starting, why you want to have an education program. We we want kids to come in, we want to have a summer camp, we want kids to be creative and have, I don't know, depending on your population, a safe place to go, a way to reinforce and and have less learning loss over the summer. I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, as well as um inspiring the next generation of theater practitioners or theater goers or just arts lovers, right? Just general arts lovers. That's a much more exciting way, because then everybody gets in touch with what they did when they were little. And they're like, if you're doing an education camp kind of program, it's like, oh, I remember doing this, and this was this was really great. But now that I know more, I'd like to do X and Y to bring it together. And all of that has a way of moving you forward much more quickly than the, you know, woe is me. And so it's hard, it's hard for me to to even follow my like dictum of, you know, it's not about knots. It's avoiding the knots, it's avoiding the negative. It's it is hard, it is very hard. But when you do that, you see the possibilities, but in a very pragmatic way, you know. I I I'm loath to kind of do the whole Pollyanna approach. I don't think that produces the work that you want to see. I don't think it gives you the the critical perspective that you need that most people need, because most people go hard, like let's all be positive, or hard, let's be negative. But when you're developing something and you're trying to think critically, you really want to live firmly in the world of this can work, this can do this. How do we make it better? And to make it better, we we are sure to do X and Y so that we have less of X and of this. Notice there were no knots and there was no, you know, avoid this. It was just less of. And you start to see it, it is it is a challenge to move to that thought process, but that's a dramaturgical critical thinking process that really helps structure new kinds of seasons, new per ways of writing, new ways of organizing your season in your education program. You can use that approach in any division or department in your theater or performing arts organization, you know, and it it and it's once you get past how hard it is, it's fun because then it's just it's it's just a lot of ideas that actually make sense that you can do something with.
SPEAKER_02For this episode on dramaturgy, I'm here with Lenora Inez Brown, a dramaturg who I go way back with to our tender college years, and who has since become a foremost expert and author on dramaturgy. Lenora, would you tell us your origin story?
SPEAKER_03Sure. Well, as you said, we went to college together. And while I was in college, I realized I was two classes short of doing a double major in theater and art history. And I was majoring in art history with the idea of I would do something art historical, whether it was working in a museum or working as a curator. I don't even know if I knew what you could do with that degree, but I loved art history. And one of my classes in art history was we focused on impressionism for a period of time. And Linda Nochlin wrote this amazing dissertation on the impressionists. It was groundbreaking and it changed a lot, at least in this country, as to how we understand and and talk about the impressionists. But I went into Sherman Art Library to find it, thinking it had to be there, because I don't know why I thought it had to be there. And it it was it was shelved in this like far away world. Like I was just nobody knew it was there. And I just thought, what is the point of doing all of that thinking? And it just stays on a shelf. And I could when I went over to my theater classes, even if we were just doing scenes, you know, we had to go and research some things, and you would just see how you could use it right away. And I I liked that I could impact something right away or or you know, thereabouts. So when I went to apply for grad school, because I knew I was not talented enough to be an actor, and I also can't handle the job insecurity that comes with being an actor. I just like little did I know how much job insecurity there is with dramaturgy, but that is a whole other story. And so I and I didn't even know dramaturgy existed. So I applied for theater history. Well, two programs did not have theater history, they only had dramaturgy. Uh, Yale. And actually, that's not true. Stanford, Stanford had theater history. Columbia had dramaturgy, but I did not apply to Columbia. But I applied to Stanford and I applied to Yale. Um ironically, I really wanted to go to Stanford. Uh, I was waitlisted there and I got into Yale. And ironically, the guy who wanted to go to Yale was not accepted or waitlisted at Yale, but got into Stanford. So it was his spot I should have taken. So we both ended up at Stanford and Yale. I have no idea who the guy is to this day. But the registrar and I were fast friends, and I'd call her almost every day. I'm like, well, and she's like, Yeah, Yale has it's like, no, Stanford, no. She's like, Well, good. The lady from Stanford's like, well, good, you're going to Yale. That's good. And so I went there and learned that there were three tracks to dramaturgy at that time. One was working in education or writing education guides, which at the time consisted of lots of Xeroxing for high school teachers. There was critical research and writing, which was not a strength. So I was like, and that just was again, it was like writing Lyndon Auckland's fabulous, groundbreaking impressive PhD, but it gets shelved. Or working in a rehearsal hall on new plays. And that was what I I had never known you could do that. And I really loved it. Just kind of proceeded from there. And then after working for a period of time, was invited to teach at DePaul in the theater studies department in the dramaturgy area with a class with a woman I had gone to Yale with. She was a couple years ahead of me, Dr. Wright, Rachel Steyer. And while I was there and started some classes, and but really you realize you start, you have to you have to teach someone how to do dramaturgy. I don't they didn't really do that at Yale. They it was very experiential, but they didn't necessarily say, you know, here's how you do it, because they were um they were all theater critics and writers. And that's where dramaturgy kind of stemmed from in our country. And so I I, you know, I I had to help these young people, they were they were undergrads, they were 18 to 21, know how to do what what we want would like them to do in a rehearsal hall and how to be professional and all of these things that that we teach at a at a theater school. And so you realize that you have to truly define items and you can't just say, well, you know, it kind of feels like this. You actually have to codify it. And that experience, plus working on a lot of new play festivals where you have to do a lot of stuff very, very quickly because you have like a week to work on the plays. And and and one of the playwrights I was working with said, you know, and of course, as a dramaturg, you're rarely in a space with another dramaturg, in a in a rehearsal room with another dramaturge. That's what I mean when I say space. She said to me, She goes, You know, Lenora, you really do dramaturgy different than a lot of other people, which I had no idea. And she said, You should write a book because you actually can talk about it, which also I didn't realize. And and she went on later to teach playwriting. And I said, Well, I will give myself this particular summer. We were both in the same place, or we were in, yeah. No, I was in a place. And I said, uh, I will sit down every day and write and see what I come up with. And if I come up with something that I think will lead to a book, then I'll write a book. And I sat there and started to realize that a lot of my classes were helping me to kind of think in that form. And that's how the art of active dramaturgy was started. And then I was lucky enough to find a publisher. It took time, and then I wrote more quickly the second book, which which is the uh art of active dramaturgy, which is really for everyone playwrights, actors, dramaturgs, and directors, so that they all know how they are collaborating with one another, because everyone in a new play setting is functioning like a dramaturg. You you you are contributing to the process in some way, even if it's I don't understand what this character is saying, you're asking that question that's helping the director know, do I need to speak up and do direction here? Or does the playwright need to speak up and explain the text and or rewrite the text? Or does the dramaturg need to come in and and kind of say to the writer, this actor's just struggling to understand the character. Your text is everything is there. We all agree with that, you know. And so, and how and how an actor and how a director and how a dramaturg can ask great questions of each other. So there's a lot of exercises in the book and that model how you can talk and the like. So and that and a whole bunch of other articles related to playwrights and and the like. So that's that's kind of how it came to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, fascinating. So the the two books you mentioned are both available, I believe, on Amazon and and elsewhere.
SPEAKER_03Um at my publisher's website, pack it publishing.
SPEAKER_02Pack it publishing is the preferred source, yes. Which it's funny because you know, whenever I say or all last year I was always saying dramaturgy, dramaturgy, dramaturgy, in our season planning, in you know, the hiring of directors for those season shows, et cetera. And people would say, well, what is dramaturgy? Is it script doctoring? And I was like, well, kind of, but you know, we as a community of theater aren't dealing with new plays. So we're not really doctoring the script, we are doctoring ourselves to face the script. But you know, the whole the formulation script doctor or play doctor leads me to recognize that in your your approach is very common or similar to how a physician's clinical encounter with a patient is what is the chief complaint in the encounter? And then, you know, how can we make it better? And so I don't know how you feel about the term play doctor, script doctor, but is it helpful in bringing people into dramaturgy and demystifying it, or is it a negative connotation term itself?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't think that the term script doctor endears a dramaturg to a playwright or to a group of actors and a director. It first of all, it's not what you're doing. You're not doctoring, because to me, doctoring means you're changing and you are changing. You are participating in the development of something, but that is not the same as doctoring. What you're doing as a dramaturg, whether whether you're working on a new play, which means that the playwright is there, the playwright is listening to the actors read words for the first, maybe second time. And when they hear them read aloud, the writer says, This works really well. This is not landing the way I wanted it to land. I need to make some adjustments. And the playwright goes away either that night or two weeks later when the workshop ends and makes adjustments. But the dramaturg may be there to transcribe conversations that actors are having and questions that they're having. They may also be there to um be a sounding board when the playwright says, you know, that really wasn't landing, and you're like, you might say, as the dramaturg, actually, I think it was landing. What I think was happening was everyone's cell phones were vibrating for some reason and nobody knows why. And so they were very distracted for the next three pages, or whatever may be happening. You're you kind of help set the you you're you're a third set of eyes, the director's there as well, looking and saying, yeah, it's not landing, but what do you really want to have happen? Or yeah, I think it landed, so let's let's go back and review it tomorrow or whatever. As a dramaturg, you're there to help create a space for discovery and period for period, whether it's an old play or a new play. And an old play means the playwright is no longer making changes. You are legally not allowed to make any changes unless you are the playwright. So it's either a new play, could have been produced before, but the playwright's there and making some changes, that's still a new play, or it's what I would call a set text, where that's what it is. If you make any changes, you have to go to their agent, you have to go to the publishing house, you have to go to the estate, and you have to get these changes approved. We don't want to say the word the, we don't, we don't want this character to be male, we want it to be female. You have to get all of those things approved. Many people don't know that, but you do. The dramaturg's there to create, to facilitate and moderate an environment where people can be creative in a much more accelerated fashion. And so the dramaturg will ask questions as well as listen to what people are going for and remind people that oh, you you you you've asked me the question, did that land? And you're like, it didn't land. And so the playwrights might start to have all these changes in mind that they can do to make that work, or the director or the actor. But you have to sit there and say, this didn't land because the setup wasn't there five pages earlier, or the setup wasn't there earlier. You don't always know how many pages. Or I think we don't know what we're talking about. We we don't, none of us really know what this world is supposed to look like here. So we need some some time with the director and the playwright to like explain what's happening in the world. Now we can have the actors do that, and now we can say, okay, we know what we're talking about, or at least we decided something, and it's not landing. So either that was the wrong decision or it really isn't landing. So, you know, you're trying to look and help people not go, not rewrite a play that that doesn't need to be rewritten, or rewrite a scene that doesn't need to be rewritten. And you're there, as one of our t-shirts always said, you know, I'm a dramaturg, ask me why. You know, why doesn't this work? Why? And you're saying it if the setup's not there, but where should it have been set up? Sometimes you notice the most, the smallest of details, you know, where and where it's some where a character says something in the first act in the midst of a thousand words, and you're like, but you know, he already said that. And so you have two choices as a playwright. You can you can use that as the secret, or or you can build on it and it becomes a a major point because it does it does something in the second act or the third act, which actually happened in a play that I was working on. And I said to the playwright, but here's what he said. And so the playwright, rather than rewriting everything, just made it this one little shift of, and I saw you on the balcony, you know, and it just was like, oh, this person was was was really in love. They were watching this person all this time. They weren't a stalker, it wasn't a stalking play.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I want to throw you a curveball and to set you up for it, I want to say the mainstream of this podcast is now topics, topics that help us sustain theater as a live performing art in what I call a digital tsunami threatening to drown us all. Netflix, everything else. So it's it's hard for live theater to sustain itself when there's so many more convenient options than getting out into public. So it is less clear to me how a dramaturg can help sustain a sort of community theater or a revival house of professional theater where the plays aren't really being made. They're being reanimated. It's very clear to me how a dramaturg adds value in new play creation because if theater is going to persist, it needs a steady guide of new plays. So there's lots of Playwriting groups. Um, I'm a member of one that's you know meets Sunday morning and all these writers get together and maybe read 10 minutes of their work and maybe put on. Well, then these plays never really progress past the one act because it's kind of about time sharing. How do you feel? Here's the curveball question. How do you feel about writers' groups coaching each other in playwriting?
SPEAKER_03Well, I think writers' groups, like any artist-related group, right? Like musician group or painter group, I think those are fantastic because, first of all, you have a reason, a light, you know, you got a fire under your butt to sit down at the computer and write, which is the hardest thing in the world for any of us to do, is to sit down at the computer and go, oh, it's time to tap something out. I mean, I know I feel that way when I try to, you know, write a paper or some an article. It's like, oh, I gotta sit there and actually do it. And so deadlines help. So every Sunday morning would be super fantastic. Um, I think one of the challenges of the writers group is either A, everyone comes at the experience at the same level. And so how are you actually moving each other forward? Like what new piece of um critical thought or or criticism are you giving that can help move yourself and the group forward? So I think one of the real things you want to look for is a variety of levels in within the group or bringing in people a couple of times a year who are at a different level in terms of creation and writing and execution. Because the challenge is if the if the person you bring in is is at a seven, who's pushing them? They're gonna be looking for the other group where they're gonna get pushed. So being respectful of that, I think is important. But to create that community is important, but then the writers group has to do something within the public, you know, finding a place to have opportunities for people outside of that insular group to hear what is happening. I think where writers groups or any artist group from any art discipline where they begin to fall short is when they just they're just people meeting and that's it. You start to hear the same comments, you start to, you know, realize you're still just writing the same, the same basic story. You know, it it's it's like it's even with the same with sports, right? If you really want to work out and lose weight, you can either do the same thing and do like five sit-ups, or you can say, I really need to do this, I need to go to a class where the teacher actually does sit-ups as part of the class. So I actually have to do 10 instead of the five I know I can do. Or maybe I need to get a trainer, you know, a private person, or do a semi-private class and have that happen. So the worst thing that you could do when you're trying to work out and improve your fitness level is to just sit there and do the same thing. Uh, unless you are extremely motivated, and some people are, and you can find, you know, you can set your goals and really do that, but you don't really know, even when you do it that way, you don't know, are you actually doing your sit-ups in the best possible way? You know, and then maybe there's a new style of sit-up you could do that would be more difficult and get you your abs where you want them to be. I've never had abs. I would love to have abs. Um, you know, that's that's the real challenge. And and interestingly, you know, the way dramaturgy started was a series, was a letter writing exercise between Lessing in Germany, Goltold Lessing, and the creators of the writers of opera, which was like musical theater of the day, and they were really trying to write to find out why this form of storytelling for the masses, rather than a novel, rather than just a symphony, rather than, you know, just song, the songbook, whatever the songbook style was then. Why opera? You know, certainly if you look at opera, and it is a precursor to musical theater, although we would never really think that because it's so majestic, but it really is. You know, it was material found, often found material, you know, great myths, great his fictional stories and fictional characters, and to provide us a sense of the majesty of those myths or the immense, I don't even know what word I'm looking for, vibrancy of the love that people had, or jealousy that they may have, the immense emotion that they're experiencing. You needed to add certain musical notes and tones and scales, harmonic or melodic, to bring forth the emotion and carry people away and bring them through. They were written in the popular language. So now we we think, oh, they're in German, oh, it's in French, it's in Italian. If you were in Italy, you were hearing an Italian opera. You're in America, you hear Hamilton, it's written in English. You know, now we translate things, but back then it was oh, this was written for this group of people, but he happened to be a really great composer, and so it ends up being done someplace else. And then it becomes something other than it was initially intended to be opera and theater, same thing. It's becoming very difficult for the average person to obtain a ticket and feel like they're participating in something. And so, you know, I I think dramaturges play a major role in helping to communicate how the play, the story the play is telling and how we're telling it and why it's interesting to today's audience. That's also a dramaturg's job, which is why it is important, even in for a community theater, um, for them to be there as a consultant or a staff member to work with the marketing department because the marketing department has a different goal. They their goal is to inform the public so that they will purchase tickets. The dramaturg's goal is to inform the public so that they are well aware of what they what what they are seeing, not not the whole story. Don't want to spoil the endings. That's not that's not the what, but what is this piece of theater? What is it doing? Why is why was it great? You know, 50 years from now, people may be like, why was Hamilton so great? You know, it's like all the controversy that's happened, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can sit there and remind people and make it connect with something that that that they understand in from their era. And then you're like, oh, oh, it's and then you start to see how how they really are just seven stories, but they're reinvented for your for your era and your the scientific and social accomplishments of your day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Filled in beautifully that rationale that I said I was doubtful about how the value proposition of a dramaturge in community theater. And it's that relevance and accessibility. So telling people why, for example, the why are we doing The Tempest? Well, because it's a story about uh, you know, revenge and regime change and vengeance blocks.
SPEAKER_03But those themes, those themes rise to the fore in 2025, but yes, you know, a father-daughter storytelling may rise to the fore in 1994, you know. And so great plays have extraordinary themes and they are timeless. And then it becomes the director and the dramaturg or the director and the cast to kind of decide, and well, the design team really before the cast, what stories are we going to bring forth? And a great dramaturgical approach that a director may use is to say, well, this is interesting, father-daughter, or parent-child, but it kind of flags when we get to act four. You know, it it does not, it's just everything else is overwhelming it. So, how do we stage it so that we don't it doesn't flag? The storytelling may flag, but the directoral story flag storytelling can't flag. And if we can't make that hurdle happen, then we have chosen the wrong theme to emphasize. Um and that's that's where a lot of productions really fall apart, is that they they pick a theme that they love, and then they it cannot, the play cannot support it all the way through.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One of the things I want to touch on, you mentioned marketing, and I have found it in the past very challenging to get marketing people to come to the dramaturgy table. A, uh, I've met marketing people who don't even want to read the play before developing graphics for it. B, they don't uh necessarily want to go beyond what the image is, or you know, some very familiar presentation. For example, say you choose the Pirates of Penzance, and somebody puts together a graphic that's a a male pirate and something to do with a treasure map, and all that, and I'm like, but that's not the pirates of Penzance, it's not a treasure hunt. It's as much about the women in the play. I consider it, I consider Pirates of Penzance to be possibly the most feminist of the Gilbert and Sullivan's. Because Mabel in particular has real agency in determining the fate of all the pirates who are all fallen English noblemen and getting them to reintegrate into society. And Mabel does that almost single-handedly in the play. And so it's like, well, how can can't can't that be in the marketing imagery somehow? Can the can the group of pirates depicted be, you know, many genders? You know, so there's just how do you, and I and I guess uh maybe your formulation, it's not about knots, is helpful, but how do you get, say, a marketing person to drink the Kool-Aid of a dramaturgical process?
SPEAKER_03That is the challenge of all people.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I'm not crazy.
SPEAKER_03No, I mean, but to be fair to the marketing people, many departments won't read the plays. Even even a draft, even if they know it's a new play, you know, just to kind of say, like, well, you know, the the general story is here. There are some things that are probably going to happen in a workshop, but this is basically the story. Yeah, it's it's really challenging. Um the the way uh I think my colleagues, some of my colleagues have gotten around it, some of and some I have, I found a good way to get around it, is you have to try to create a fun way of basically sharing the whole plot of the play and the story that you want to tell. And plot and story are not the same. You know, whether it's a lunch and learn, whether it's at this point, because Zoom is it wasn't what when I was at some of these theaters, it's more prevalent now. You know, having the playwright come and do a half-hour Zoom and they talk about the story and the like. All playwrights want their play to be marketed well. And so many marketing departments miss the opportunity to speak with the playwrights, or when they call, they're not prepared for that call. And and so the other way around it is okay, you don't have time to prepare for the call because you have your job. So then bring the dramaturg or whoever on your staff who really knows the play onto the call with the playwrights so that show the theater in the best light, right? The theater knows what this play is doing, even if it's really only one person who knows what the play what the play is doing. You know, because because everybody does have a lot to do. So that's you know, do the lunch and learn, do the do join them for the video. Just there are so many ways and creative and fun ways, but people people won't read. And I always worked, I was always the person who wrote the blurbs. It was always fascinating to me when the marketing office would edit them, and often the editing would change the story entirely. It was like this is not this is not the play. And so you kind of had to go back and you had to say, no, I don't know where you're getting this from. And and yes, there are times to say no, to use knots, because this is not the story, because it's not. But I think it's also about you know, saying, here is the plot, you know, she falls in love with him, she kills him. It's the end of the story. It's like that is not a very exciting. I mean, you know, and it's like, but how that comes about is where it's really fascinating. And here, and here are some of the themes. You know, I like to talk about the themes, you kind of bring those themes. That's when, and also if you present, if you if you as an artistic director or a theater leadership team, take the time to present the season or present a play if you're if you aren't oriented towards seasons, um, with a plot, a story, and themes as part of your presentation, your marketing department will take what you have. If you say we're doing Hamlet, they're gonna take what they remember from Hamlet. If you say you're going to do the crucible, they're gonna take what they remember from the crucible. Same with Pirates of Penzance or what they can find online. But if you say, Pirates of Penzance, here's the plot, here's the story, Mabel, one of the women featured in the piece, I don't know, Pirates of Penzance, does this, blah, blah, blah, works throughout to help these disenfranchised gentlemen gain, regain a sense of self. And, you know, as pirates, but regain a sense of self and a sense of purpose within the world. That's the story that we're telling. It's Mabel who does this. So, you know, the theme is women who see men for what they are, but works to help them. Men who are going through a new transition, sort of like retired men, you know, who leave their jobs and it's like, oh, like any of us who reinvent ourselves every so often. These are the themes. So what kind of, and then you can even just stop in your lunch and learn, what kind of images does that bring up for you? What kind of people does that relate to you? Who who who might be the ideal audience? What might be some images that would get to them? You know, in my head, I'm starting to see Mabel as like a puppet master, but that does have a kind of a negative connotation because then she's, you know, but maybe it's maybe it's Mabel's more like a director where she's where they know they they know she's leading them, or maybe she is a puppet master. Maybe that, maybe that that is there. And maybe that image then helps the director go, yeah, I do want it to have a little bit of a sinister feel, but not entirely, you know? And how do I how do we all play that balance? So things like that, but you can have the plot, the story, the themes, and then say, so what what what does that how does that resonate with you? What does that give bring to you? Because if you are not careful, everyone will go to the internet or chat GPT. And because they don't really understand the play or the production and the direction the production wants to go, then you're gonna end up with marketing that says, This is a play about men who sing. And then you're like, why is this woman like in every scene and the lights following her, even when she's not singing? And then people feel like they got gypped because they didn't want to see a play about a girl, they wanted to see a play about men singing, you know? Yeah, and yeah, and that's that's what you really have to watch. That's when the marketing isn't helping. You may have gotten butts in the seats, but you won't get those butts back the next time. Because they're like, Yeah, the play was good, but you know, I thought it was gonna be about guys and it was about this woman. And that's fine, it was good, but I mean, is this play that were that's coming up, is it gonna be about frogs or is it gonna be about something else? Because I don't like frogs, you know, if they're looking if they're looking at the frogs, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, a dramaturg obviously does great things when they're allowed to. What is it like for a dramaturg out there uh to make a living as a dramaturg? Is it a profession trending upward level or trending downward? Or you know, is is there a perception problem to overcome?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, dramaturg and the literary department are still the most vulnerable positions in the theater. It's it's research and development when you're dealing with new plays, and if you aren't dealing with new plays, it's still researching and develop helping develop ideas so that the piece resonates with you know the audience, especially if it's something as dated as or as old, not necessarily dated, but as old as Shakespeare or the Greeks. You know, we still have students enrolling in dramaturgy programs. The American College Theater Festival has done great things to further promote dramaturgy. And you know, they have a summer workshop. We've had one for a while there. So there's a lot that's happening, and the younger generations sort of understand dramaturgy more than certainly my generation. However, our our country has seen the demise of many prestigious new play programs. You know, Humana Festival's gone, Sundance is gone, the O'Neill is is there, but it's in trouble, and we've lost a few other new play festivals, and they've just gone straight out of my head. That's not good. That that's not good. They didn't all hire dramaturks, but the point is that the in-house staff was working with those writers. And if those writers aren't gonna have a space, it is logical that those in-house staffs are considerably smaller than they used to be. And certainly for Sundance, they don't exist. So you've lost that.
SPEAKER_02Um Do you think uh you know, to turn to the digital tsunami that I mentioned earlier, do you think that uh streaming media studios are siphoning off the writer's talent by changing incentives? No no longer is short form two-hour storytelling uh all the rage. Now we want ten hours of a season for streaming, or you know, three five seasons of six episodes or whatever. So, you know, longer form and has dramaturgy or some of the work that would have been done in theaters migrated into some of these studios. But is is that something you're seeing, or or do you have any sense of that?
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm just I'm gonna call it Hollywood because it's still kind of referred to that way. Hollywood has always taken, and I mean that in a positive sense, taken theater writer, playwrights and said, write a play, I mean, write a movie, write a T we got this new thing called TV, write a TV show. We've got this new form like HBO had when we were, you know, just coming out of college, and you know, and now it's it is really quite the rage, you know, to do just six episodes of something, or you get to do the Sopranos, which is like many episodes of amazingness. So, and what's interesting is that at least when it comes down to things like The Wire, which was great in the 90s, obviously, and and a few other pieces, you know, there are dramaturgs who work as producers because they can put the whole thing together and help put put things together from a story perspective. They may not become members of the writer's room, but they be, you know, they they do function more on the producer, executive, producer level. Some it's always been there. It's just that now you have people writing video games. I mean, we have actors, people I went to Yale with who are very well known as characters in video games. And I was like, what is this person do? Doing. And then you look at their resume, and it's like all these video games. It's like I have never turned on a video game, so I don't know. But it's a thing, it's a total thing. And so there's there's so many venues for actors, and there's so many venues for writers and directors, mind you, and and therefore dramaturgs. I did a very, very short stint. I know I just said I didn't have never turned on a video game, but I did work on a video game before they were the thing. And it was kind of weird, but it was kind of cool. Um so you know, it's just that there's just many more opportunities. I think, I think the challenge becomes how do you encourage or bring people, wean people from their device and bring them into a public setting. I think that's that's the challenge. It's always been the challenge, but it's more of a challenge now because everyone had a taste of sitting at home during COVID. And it impacted at least two generations of kids in a way that we are only beginning to understand. And because of that, it's going to be more difficult. It's also an opportunity to create simple or more simplified, and I don't mean like, you know, trite, but sometimes the overproduction gets in the way. And some and you know, and you just want to see, you just want to see like people talking to each other, and you don't know that that's what you want to see. Like you don't know that that's what you want to, you want to go into a world. It also means that you know, you you want to see actors who can do the craft without all the bells and the whistles around. And that that may be a challenge, right? Because they're learning how to act with green screens and for video games, but do they know how to just be in a room and make a bunch of choices and you know, and and do and do what needs to be to be done. I mean, I I've been watching the new season of Professor T, the PBS on PBS. And um, I mean, they have everybody like Zoe Wanamaker and oh my god, what's her name? I've forgotten her name. I anyway, saw her when I was in London, not Zoe. Well, actually, I did see her and another and the other woman whose name I can't remember, but she played Hedda Gabler, which was just like amazing. Juliet Juliet Stevenson. Juliet Stevenson, yeah. I finally got into my, you know, and these are people who like Meryl Streep can fill a whole stage, right? But they have to fill this like tiny screen, and so they have to like pare it down, but they're fascinating to watch. And so the director of this series or whoever was writing it this season decided to have fun. And there are just some weird, quirky scenes like out of nowhere. And the only way you can pull them off is because you really know how to act, because it's just you could it's it's hysterical, but it's hysterical because they're playing completely against what we're looking at. You know, two people well north of 50 with with you know these sun reflectors and sunglasses who never go out in the sun and should not go out in the sun, and yet they are out in the sun on the top of a building, you know, in you know, an Oxbridge kind of building. And and then they just have like a a five-line scene where it's like, Well, did you know this? And I didn't know that. Well, now you know, okay. And then one person is like, oh, and just folds the fan and just starts to get up. And the woman it's like, the sun's not gone. You know, I mean, it's just like I mean, you're just and you're like, no, no, you know, only a theater actor could pull that off. I mean, you know, I mean, there are just because you have to know you're not doing it for the camera, you know? You're doing it for the characters and just for the moment, and it's just the you know, and the camera's just there, or you're just not supposed to move, you know. Very, very kind of Wes Anderson, but there's a lot more warmth. Wes Anderson's yeah, very dry.
SPEAKER_02Um, I'll have to look that one up, Professor T. I don't think I've ever seen it.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a European series, and then they've I think it started in Germany, but they have remade it. They've made it in London, in England twice, I think. But this current series starts stars Ben Miller, so you should watch the this series, and then you you can see, yeah. So it's it's it's in a couple of languages, but that's what it is.
SPEAKER_02He's I'll I'll watch it in English. That's my best language.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he's he's he's got all the all the things, right? He he w he's brilliant, he's you know, lectures on criminology, but he has to wear gloves. He has all the phobias, and you know, it's just it's kind of it's kind of that's your kind of classic. He's very proper and he just kind of appears and disappears. He knows who the killer is, you know, the police are like not always behind him, because he's he he will say it's not that person, but he can't tell you who it is because he doesn't have all the evidence yet. But yeah, it's it's it it it's quirky.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. Well, and those those kinds of successful uh portrayals uh a character that keeps you coming back to situation after situation because the character is is compelling. I mean, those are co-creation of a writer and an actor, but they are why we all still tune into a lot of that stuff. And and even why franchise movies get made, uh sequels, I don't know. How does a dramaturg contribute to some the creation of that kind of a character? Is are those just accidents of alchemy between an actor and a script, or do dramaturgs have a role in sharpening up some of those choices?
SPEAKER_03There have been some credited dramaturges on films. I'm not sure about series where they get the credit as a dramaturg, but they might work on it and work, work like I said, as like an executive producer or a producer, and they're and they're kind of you know going through the questions of the play and and the I mean the questions of the character and the questions of the story and and really helping to kind of assist in the charting of all of that. I would say the other thing. And often they're called sh the showrunner, the the well that's but no, actually, actually that's that is a writer because showrunners, showrunners do have special education and licensing and all that kind of stuff, but it's usually a writer that becomes because you have to write. The difference between a dramaturg and a writer is many, it's great, but the one fundamental difference is a dramaturg does not write a single word of a play. They do not do that. They they may be charged with editing like a Shakespearean text, but they would not be writing language. And certainly if it's a new play, they do not write anything. They might write the essay that or or the web materials that kind of help create context, but in terms of dialogue, they don't. And showrunners will generally chart things, and they some showrunners write episodes, others don't write episodes, they write whole seasons, others might you know tweak some things, but they you know that there are writers who get first and second credits on those. So that's very different.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting how the hierarchy of in which writers work East Coast and West Coast and film versus uh stay or TV versus stage has evolved and sort of stage different different. The theater that I used to work at is doing The City of Angels, the musical, which is about a writer getting kind of hijacked by a producer and forced to simplify his movie script, which is based on a novel he wrote. So it ends up becoming a completely different creation. But it's very clear, in fact, the writer's wife is sort of a New York editor and she's constantly flying from LA back to their home in New York. And they talk about how the writer is the owner of the material on in the East Coast, in in the world of novels, publishing, and and maybe theater. Whereas in the West Coast, the writer is the hired hand for the producer, maybe less so now, but it used to always be the case that, oh yeah, you would hire hire Tennessee Williams to make your you know hitchcop movie, and it doesn't work out, but he has a one-off and he's the hired hand and he hated it. So that hierarchy is different.
SPEAKER_03It it is still that it is still that way, and it it it makes life challenging. But I think the other thing that people don't, many people don't know is that and there's a current discussion happening on Facebook about it, actually. So when when a show goes to Broadway, a play goes to Broadway, let's say the play has a hundred points. You think, oh, the playwright gets all hundred points. No, the playwright owns it, but then has other people like investors and producers and directors get they take some of those points. So the playwright may only end up with like 10 points, and then you've got the director gets two, and you know, all of the producers, because there's a bajillion, they may get you know it's easier to do it with 10. The you know, if if if the playwright gets four or five and the director gets two, then the investors get well, really they should, they shouldn't get more than three, but your agent gets some of that, and then you and then but the point is you can get per uh percentages of of points, but it's basically you're you're taking away from the playwright, and the agent is working to make sure that the playwright still gets a proper number of points. And those those rights impact the residual rights when you might be produced by um what's it called, like the high school production or the community theater production of of Putnam Spelling Bee, for example, or when it's available for Hamilton, and what made Hamilton different, other than the fact that it's a juggernaut of a success in a way that nothing has been in recent memory, right? Chorus Lines probably the closest, but was never as much of a juggernaut as this, both produced by public theater initially, is that the actors received points for Hamilton. It was a thing, it wasn't automatic, it was not automatic, but there was there were there were statements made and it made sense. They're like, we really did help develop these characters because many of the many of the the people who premiered uh the production were in all or the majority of the workshops, and their comments and their phraseology and and their skills made it so that you the pieces could be written and embellished in particular ways. And because it was the success that it was, those points were given over. I mean, because let me look, it's just just you know, so that that production and that play musical, it's a complete anomaly on many, many, many levels. And it will be studied, I'm sure, uh forever because uh it just in the best way possible breaks all the rules.
SPEAKER_02Interesting that you paired it with a chorus line because there was an urban legend about the you know, the the wine drinking confession session that Michael Bennett sponsored with a bunch of hard luck dancers and on which and and a tape recording was what wrote wrote the play. I don't know if that's true, but I'm pretty certain there was no points participation back then. So those two contrasting examples, both from the public. So uh how maybe actors value has changed in the estimation of the other professionals around them, you know, going from being disposable Kleenex to being somebody who's a co-creator.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, but I mean I I I don't know that urban legend about a chorus line, but also yeah, that yeah, I don't know. It was like my first that's the first musical I read. It's not the first musical, first professional play I saw, but it's the first one that I saw that really impacted me. Like I I saw a road production, which I really have a hard time seeing road productions, but I saw a road production. I was like in fourth or fifth grade. I mean, I was young, and we were up in the mezzany, my mom and I, and I swear to you, I felt like I was right on stage the whole time. I mean, there was nothing between me and everybody who was singing. I just the stories were just so great. And I think I think that's why I really love very spare, like spare acting and spare productions. They I don't need all of the things, I just want that. And I, you know, and I want an actor who can really, who really knows what they're talking about when they're and that a dramatur can help with that as well, can help help you break down a speech, because not everybody goes to school for that, and they don't always know how to break them down. And even if they do, sometimes, you know, it's long, and you have like, and depending on you could have a lot of speeches, and so you know, the dramatur can kind of help with that. Without directing, they can just sort of say, okay, this is a shift. And, you know, so now what do you what do you want there? Just asking the question. The director's the one who goes, you know, I don't want if you if you bring in, you have to bring something into the director, and the director's like, okay, too many shifts. You know, I just want this. Like, make this all one moment, make this all one moment. But I like what you're doing, just make it all the same. You know, dramaturgs aren't directors either, just like they're not playwrights. So it's like, how do you just kind of help break what you're saying? Which is very helpful when dealing with plates that Shakespeare wrote. Because a lot of people, a lot of people do not have a lot of exposure or training or really paid attention when they were going through those classes, because I I'm sure many of them were like, I'm not gonna be doing any Shakespeare. And then they end up doing more Shakespeare than they imagined. And so, you know, and and and and people can tell. People can they're like, oh, that's what a dramaturg can do. And you're not and and it you could do the same thing for our town, you know, those monologues. It's just about knowing what you're saying, really knowing what you're saying. And it's not just because Shakespeare uses words that we don't use anymore, it's really how do they come together to form an idea, you know? And and I I think that's that's a challenge that you probably face more in community theater than you do outside of community theater because one, you're not expected to know your lines before rehearsal starts. When you're working in a professional theater, you you just you just aren't like you should have read the script, you should know a lot of things, but to memorize the lines beforehand means you're going to not know how the director wants this world to be created. And that actually helps you memorize lines, you know. And in fact, people don't memorize lines, they learn lines, right? Because they learn how the character functions in the world. And so if if if if they're constantly stubbing their toe, they're gonna be like, oh, this person is a klutz. Like this is gonna, this is, and so every time I see every time I get to a certain kind of line, I'm stubbing my toe. I get it. Like this is this is her weirdness, whatever. Um but if you memorize your lines, there's not a lot of room for that. And then everything becomes very stilted. And so what happened, and then you find people, if if people in community theater want to branch outside of a type of character that they're playing, they need to liberate themselves from memorizing the lines because they memorize in a in a style that works for them. It's like the writers' group we were talking about earlier. You just you continue to to hone that. And unless you really push yourself and you say, you know what, I'm not using any gerons, I'm like never, I'm not using this. Unless you put some challenges before yourself and you stick to it, your writing isn't going to change at the rate that you would like, or maybe it will not change at all, which would be unfortunate. If you go in with a different, if you go in to to to to to discover, then more things will be there. And then there's a point where you have to put it all together, right? The discovery starts, stops, and the honing kicks in. And that's when, you know, dramaturgs will watch a play, a run-through, and they'll be taking notes, and they're they'll say to the director, this isn't making sense. I don't think they I don't think it's clear what what they're saying, or we can't understand what is happening here, like the story. This is where the play can't really support the theme the way we thought it could. So here are some ideas of what we what might happen, what might help, like this happened earlier, if we can find a way to bring it to, you know, keep that ball in the air all this way. And, you know, this could these these uh these points in the story could help you do that, you know. But then it's up to the director to decide if he wants to give that note or not. And you're not giving, you're not telling the director how to do it, you're just saying, you've got a lot to do, just like you'd say for the marketing department, you've got a lot to do because you've got to go in and make the lights work, you know, and tell the lighting designer where this is gonna be and all this stuff. Here are options because we both know this isn't working the way we would like it to work. And you may do with it what you will, you know. And sometimes it's as simple as I'm sitting in a different part of the theater as the director, and I can't see anything. Like this this pillar is making it so, and so the director's like, okay, I need to cheat a little bit. This per this this area is always gonna have the pillar and they're gonna lose stuff, but they shouldn't lose the play 100%. Like they shouldn't, like they should see the actor at least 25% of the time, you know, at a minimum. Yeah, yeah. And so it's like, great, I didn't know that. Or good, I'll sit there and I will figure out how to move them. Great, I'll sit over there. You know, I mean, it could sometimes it can be like that, and it's not you're again not directing because you're not saying she should go over here on this line. You're just saying I can't see her at all. I never problem spotting. Yeah, so it there's there's a lot of roles that you play. There are there can be a lot of roles that you play. Depends on how the theater is set up and whether there's like an intern who's an assistant director or an official assistant director. I mean, but there's there are there are a lot of options. There are there are a lot of different ways. But but actors, you know, actors want to learn their lines in the rehearsal hall, you know. Yeah. What what you can do is have a lot of readings around the table where you stop and start and you kind of talk about what's happening in the scene. So everybody starts to understand what is happening and why Caliban is saying that at this point. But and the and the repeated reading and understanding will make it so that people begin to learn their lines rather than memorize their lines. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, yeah. So it strikes me that we didn't cover a whole raft of things that I had hoped to cover. And maybe there's an opportunity for a sequel podcast around the tactics of a dramaturg and the diplomacy and and how to relate to the various roles of the different people in a theater, et cetera. We don't have time to do that now. Great. Well, thank you, Lenora Inez Brown. And I'd love to have you back at some point to talk more tactically tactically and you know, and also to hear uh how your life path is taking you at this juncture. We're we're having similar life paths. Well, there we are.
SPEAKER_03Well, Rob, it would be great to talk to you. It's always great to catch up, and it it really is. It's really great. Thank you.
