Earlier this year, Sarah Rose Leonard and I were connected by a mutual friend after getting laid off from our longtime literary management roles. Losing my job rattled my existence – my work and self-worth are unhealthily intertwined – but the two of us found camaraderie in our shared experiences and concerns about the future of the field, as we saw countless staff dramaturgy positions eliminated across the country. 

We figured we weren’t alone, so we reached out to dozens of colleagues, inviting them to reflect on their own artistic practices, pandemic experiences, and the future of institutional dramaturgy. Four dramaturgs responded: Kirsten Bowen, Ashley Chang, Sarah Rose Leonard, and Naysan Mojgani. The following is a compilation of edited responses. 

We had conversations with many dramaturgs who talked to us about how they did not feel able to respond in writing to these particular prompts due to sadness, anger, confusion, disagreement, a sense of drawing a blank, or having too much to say. In the interest of holding space for processing, we want to note that omission, boundaries, and taking time to not participate is a part of our collective understanding of this time too.

I. Reflection

How do you see your role as a dramaturg? Define dramaturgy for yourself, exactly how you practice it.

ASHLEY CHANG: To practice dramaturgy is, for me, to be alert to the many meanings alive within a play; to reflect those meanings back to the writer as observations, affirmations, and questions; and to do all this with a gentle sensitivity to whatever the writer is open to hearing. I try to take in the play as a whole—as a Rube Goldberg machine, or a small planet—and let my sense of it emerge from its unique arrangement of words, figures, events, and images. I also try to listen to the conversations it pursues with itself, with other works of art, with the world, and with the present moment.

NAYSAN MOJGANI: A mentor summed up dramaturgy to me as "holding a mirror up to the work." A colleague offered "to read things and have opinions." I frequently compare it to being an editor (in part because as a 4-year-old, I wanted to be a book editor when I grew up). I've variously described it as cheerleader, as peacemaker, as interpreter, as professional "let me Google that for you"-er.

Really, for me, being a dramaturg is to be a caretaker — for my collaborators, for the audience, for the script, for the world that informs and is informed by the work.

KIRSTEN BOWEN: I see myself as a reflector. My way into a piece is to ask myself what am I seeing? What are you trying to communicate to me? How does this piece intellectually and emotionally hit me? Is that the artist’s intended impact? What is this piece trying to do and how can I best serve it to get there? Does this piece need me as a researcher to help fill out the world for the company? To ask certain questions? Does it need a facilitator to navigate relationships between the artists, institution, and audience?

SARAH ROSE LEONARD: What I like best about dramaturgy is how I get to make it up, every time. Curate a festival. Write a well-researched essay for a program. Curate a new play program. Interview artists and edit that interview. Script supervise an entire rehearsal and production process. Be a writer’s first audience. Give notes. Do hella research. Go into the bowels of the local university library. Do a research presentation in various embedded or irrelevant forms. Bring in speakers to rehearsal. Look up how to pronounce words. Curate a pipeline of artists and/or projects for an artistic director to consider. Translate a script. Host a talkback series. Collaborate in rehearsals in ways I don’t quite know how to articulate but that feel like being a sticker, or glue, or medium.

Sometimes when I’m responding to a question about what I do I credit something my friend Sarah Lunnie wrote in an interview: “I think of myself as an early audience and as a collaborative editor.” Sometimes I say that I’m the intuitive connector of everyone in a theatre (audience, staff, artists, etc.) No two processes are alike, nor could they ever be, and I honor that by doing my best to practice being fluid and generative.

II. Reckoning

What was/is your job to you? What do you miss? What is still alive within you? 

NAYSAN: I was furloughed for eight and a half months, and then three weeks before I was scheduled to return to what I had at one point thought of as "the job I’m going to retire from someday," I instead gave my notice and accepted a new position elsewhere.

It's hard to think about what the old job was. The good and the bad bleed into each other so much, even several months later. It was an institution and a position that simultaneously exemplified the best and the worst of American regional theater. I miss it. I'm relieved to have escaped.

Perversely, I'm grateful for being furloughed. In being unable to do my job, I rediscovered the joy of my work through freelancing and individual projects. In looking at my institution from the outside, I was able to name all the ways it fell short. In feeling like I had been stripped of my identity, I saw who I truly was and what I wanted to be. I was given the space to pursue something new, and the freedom to voice what I needed.

KIRSTEN: I left my institutional theater job in 2019 because my spouse took a job in another city. Ever since I have been processing the idea that institutional theater, may not be the right place for me. It demands more than I can or want to give right now. But when I worked in institutional theater my work was my social life, my purpose, my identity. For years I was perfectly happy and fulfilled with that dynamic until it began to feel too much, and I saw how it allowed the institutions and culture at large to exploit my willingness to give everything for very little – and how I as a person with access and power participated in that exploitation of others. But my last job gave me great things as well – skills and values that are still a part of me to this day and always will be. Curiosity. Empathy. The importance of community. How to live in discomfort (still working on this one). It was at my last job where I finally learned that when someone is feeling hurt by something, listen to them, believe them, and do what you can to change it. I also had mentors who listened to me, valued me, and helped me gain confidence. Artists who challenged me, changed my understanding, and honored me by entrusting me with their work. I will always appreciate that.

ASHLEY: I recently decided to leave my position as a dramaturg on staff at a theater in order to work in the animal welfare movement, so the invitation to eulogize feels both timely and way too soon. I’ll miss the folks I collaborated with the most, my allies and co-conspirators at the office, who I trust and admire so much. Their ethic of generosity, their care for artists, and their sheer love of the theater buoyed and inspired me—and I feel hope for the field, knowing they’ll be keeping the torch lit. I’m going to hold onto their spirit of curiosity and creativity, as well as their dedication to thinking far beyond the literal stage with classes, podcasts, magazines, installations. But I’m looking forward to stepping away from this professional space in order to rediscover my own quieter and messier connection to the art, while also giving myself the gift of a new day-to-day, one that’s closer to nature, closer to activism, and—now that I have the option of leaving New York City—closer to loved ones.

SARAH ROSE: I had my dream job. But I was relieved to experience the pandemic and protests as an individual, and not as a representative of an institution. To be very honest, the loss I am experiencing is one fueled by jealousy and FOMO. I miss working as a dramaturg. I am jealous of ones who are still employed in that role. I miss working in my office and hearing actors do warm-ups in the next room, even the singing exercises. I miss rehearsals, especially the ones right before tech where the play feels like it’s being performed just for us. I miss pitching in to help a stage manager with a set piece. I miss feeling like a useful connecting piece between the administration and the rehearsal room. I miss new play development. I miss that week when we hit our stride in production. I miss the fear of previews. I miss the drinks after.

KIRSTEN: I miss my friends. I miss that moment of amazement in tech when I would look at the stage and see a play that I had read and advocated for alive in three dimensions. Making the offer and it being accepted. The first day of school feeling of the first day of rehearsal when there is only possibility. 

NAYSAN: I miss the people. Colleagues, artists, audiences. But there are plenty of people I'm glad to not have in my life anymore: the toxic egos, the abusive attitudes, the entitled patrons, the phonies.

I miss the history, the palpable sense of legacy that was a daily part of my experience in a 70-year-old institution, the felt responsibility for stewarding something that had touched so many lives over decades and given so much to our shared culture. But I'm glad to no longer be suffocating under that fossilized sense of "what we do," as though present and future are dictated wholly by the past, as though change is impossible and suspect and anything other than critically necessary.

ASHLEY: Speaking to my own situation, I want to take a moment to recognize the privilege of choosing to resign from what is, for many, a dream job. In the end, for me, the challenges of the role outweighed its joys—and these all have far more to do with the industry at large than with the particular company I left. I lived in a big city where, with my salary, I could never buy a home or grow my own garden. I spent more energy on other artists’ visions of beauty than on my own. I struggled with the field’s tendency to blur the lines between personal and professional relationships, between genuine friendships and industry connections. And I enjoyed mentoring younger folks but didn’t feel that I could, in good faith, encourage them to enter an oversaturated workforce with few opportunities even for the most dedicated people. 

SARAH ROSE: I don’t miss finding a gem of a play, one of the best out of the hundreds of plays I’ve read all year, only to not produce it. I don’t miss watching another theater do that play. Or watching that writer go to LA. I don’t miss mentoring someone, giving my all to them, and not having any clue where they can get a job after. 

Dramaturgs experience a systemic, specific kind of burnout. Often, we are not listened to in the field, we are invisible unless we are being courted, or we court writers for years with little to show for it unless our AD listens to us. Often, we get little credit for our advocacy or programming…we do all of this work in the hopes we will make a difference in the lives of artists and audiences we love. We love being in the room with artists. We love the forceful articulation that is meaningful criticism, giving notes, writing itself. We are some of the most individual, smart, thoughtful, kind, curious, gracious people I know, and we are excellent at listening. Why are we so ill-used in our institutions? Why are there so few paths up?

ASHLEY: I think I ultimately found the burden of institutional gatekeeping just too heavy to bear. Theater administrators, unfortunately, have finite resources—both financial and human—and it became harder and harder for me to see the fruits of these labors, which seem to benefit just a handful of artists and somewhat limited audiences. I’m relieved I’ll no longer have the power to grant or deny people entry to the theater’s inner circle, a tiny coterie of writers whose work exceeds elite artistic standards; or whose resumes are rich with social capital; or whose identities sometimes feel like a prerequisite for eligibility. There’s a lot of complexity here, not all of it bad, but much of it just too gnarly for me to want to navigate on a daily basis. I eventually started feeling like I could do more good elsewhere.

NAYSAN: I think that one of the strangest things about institutional positions in the American theater, but maybe especially for dramaturgs, is the way you have to subsume your taste and artistic sensibility within the institutional identity. It's never "is this a good play?" (bracketing off the enormous question of is there even such a thing as a "good play" and what the fuck that even means) but "is this a good play for MY THEATER?" Even when you're lucky enough to be at an institution that largely is in sync with your own sensibility, it's still a strange way to exist as an artist.

SARAH ROSE: I’m glad I stopped drinking this year because my stomach hates alcohol, but more than anything I’m mourning all of those nights at the bar with other artists, talking about what we made, what we saw. Are those people my friends? Are they professional colleagues who now have no reason to talk to me because I’m not employed at a theater? An artist creates, but a dramaturg is collaborative by nature, they exist in concert with other artists. Am I still an artist?

III. Notes for the Future

How can institutions provide the necessary resources, support, and agency for artistic leaders? What changes do you want to see? 

NAYSAN: Be honest. Do what you say you will do, and don't waste anybody's time with performative statements that you don't actually mean. Listen to the people who serve and are served by your institution. Embrace change.

SARAH ROSE: I am grateful for the staff positions I’ve had and would be nowhere without them, but I’m a big believer now in dramaturgs being freelancers and fitting into production teams as a freelance artist would. But I don’t know how dramaturgs meet the artists they would freelance for without having been on staff at an institution. So, it’s a bit of a chicken/egg question. I believe that new play dramaturgs should not be given to a production from the theater, but that’s how many matches (and duds) are made. I prefer the matchmaking to happen in development, much like with a director. 

KIRSTEN: Institutions can pay their artists and artistic staff fairly and equitably. They can right size.  No more three-or-more jobs in one position. Dramaturgy is a different role than literary management than community engagement than casting than education than producing. Are all of these roles important, exciting, and fulfilling? Yes, but when done by one person they are rarely done as well as they can be. 

SARAH ROSE: I think dramaturgs should be on staff, but that they should be more in line with the European model where they are a version of an Associate Artistic Director (or Co-Artistic Director, if you are into a collaborative leadership model). They should be listened to and integral to the running of a theater, or else they are just sidelined as readers of scripts and that’s it. We are so much more and can be utilized better in our departments. I propose a trained committee of playreaders, led by dramaturgs (plural!), who are all community members, audiences, and local artists from the theater’s location. 

KIRSTEN: The hiring of early career professionals in permanent positions – not as seasonal interns, fellows, or apprentices who work full time with all of the expectations and responsibilities of a staff member but without the salary and benefits. This system exploits our least experienced workers, keeps our institutions predominantly white and staffed by people with economic privilege (because they can afford to take on unpaid work and stay in the industry), and is a strain on the staff themselves.  

Each season I expended the labor of hiring someone, training them, and then when we were finally in a groove and working together as a team, when they began to feel a sense of ownership over their work, when they had become integral members of the organization, they would leave because their season was over. Often for another intern or fellowship. Hire these roles as staff so that they can receive benefits, earn a living, grow into their positions and further their careers.

SARAH ROSE: Free your interns and students from dramaturgy education!! A good dramaturg has a broad education and is a citizen of the world. Learn everything, travel everywhere you are able, read a ton, talk to people, “sleep around”, develop your taste, hone your integrity, follow your nose. 

KIRSTEN: I would like to see manageable hours and workload as well. In addition to the brutal schedule of rehearsal, tech, and previews, there is the need to be reading scripts and researching on evenings and weekends, or to be staying late or returning on the weekends for supplemental programming or donor events. Or to spend our weekends traveling for festivals, conferences, and production coverage. Taken individually I found most of these obligations meaningful and even joyful, cumulatively they became overwhelming and left little time for reflection, imagining, and most importantly, resting. Thanks to the work of We See You White American Theatre, many companies are ending ten out of twelves and weekend rehearsal. Initiatives like the Artistic Caucus partnership between Baltimore Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, in which freelance artists will take part in these theaters’ artistic development processes, look to be an innovative way to not only create more opportunity and inclusive spaces (artists who do not solely identify as dramaturgs and literary managers are encouraged to apply) but to share resources and relieve some of the pressure on under staffed and over burdened artistic departments. These are great starts to dismantling unhealthy and outmoded systems that prioritize product over people. 

[Ed Note: We See You White American Theatre made similar calls in their public demands, and many theaters – including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, Playwrights Realm, Kansas City Rep, Round House Theatre, and The Wilma – have recently eliminated 10 out of 12s.]

ASHLEY: Beyond creating culture, sharing stories, amplifying voices—and beyond paying artists and administrators for their labor—could theaters approach the art of gathering as they would a demonstration, a teach-in, a church service, a food bank? Beyond entertainment—and even beyond the edification of art—what can theaters provide for the people who live on the same block? Can theaters afford to serve fewer people, learn all their names, and learn what’s going on in their lives? Can theaters stop exercising their own tastes—or appealing to the tastes of critics and scholars and juries—and create bespoke experiences for their friends and neighbors? 

KIRSTEN: Institutions need to value people over the work. Which might even result in better work.