What is Dramaturgy?

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

Dramaturgy can also be defined, more broadly, as shaping a story or like elements into a form that can be acted. Dramaturgy gives the work or the performance a structure. More than actual writing, a dramaturg's work can often be defined as designing.

This definition was found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramaturgy

NOUN: The art of the theater, especially the writing of plays.

That's a very simplistic definition for a very broad term. No wonder the term, thereby the purpose and function, is overlooked by theatre professionals all over the nation. What in the world does a dramaturg do? Saying that a dramaturg does dramaturgy or the art of the theatre is more than a little vague.

Dramaturgs can be hired by theatres or directors as freelance production dramaturgs. They can be hired by theatres as literary managers, outreach coordinators, education supervisors and artistic directors. Playwrights can hire dramaturgs to act as script consultants and editors. Dramaturgy can be general and academic, or dramaturgy can be related to a specific production. Production dramaturgy seems to be the most cryptic function a dramaturg performs. The job description of a production dramaturg can be defined as follows:

Definition found at http://www.geocities.com/amylynnhess76/whatsadramaturg.html

dramaturgy

A Dictionary of Sociology | Date: 1998

dramaturgy, dramaturgical perspective A theoretical position, often allied to symbolic interactionism, role theory, and the work of Erving Goffman, which uses the stage and the theatre as its key organizing metaphor. The idea that ‘all the world is a stage and all the people players’ is hardly new, having a long lineage which includes Greek theatre, Shakespeare, and Machiavelli. In modern sociology, the idea was most fully explored by Goffman, whose study of the micro order of interaction highlighted the ways in which people are engaged in impression management. But although he is the most central contributor to this field there have been others: either developing particular aspects of the theory, as for example the application of the concept of ‘script’ to sexuality, in the work of John Gagnon and William Simon (Sexual Conduct, 1973); applying it to particular research problems, such as the study of soccer hooligans reported in Peter Marsh et al. , The Rules of Disorder, 1978; or in political symbolism, as exemplified in Peter M. Hall 's ‘The Presidency and Impression Management’, Studies in Symbolic Interaction (1979).

definition found at http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-dramaturgy.html