Overview

Dimensions of Dramaturgy

6th annual EASTAP conference
June 14th-18th 2023
University of Aarhus - Denmark

In partnership with the ILT Festival of International Living Theatre Aarhus from 14 to 18 June 2023

Today, dramaturgy no longer solely denotes formal principles of playwriting, norms for constructing dramatic narratives and plots, or the application of compositional rules and norms in performance making alone. As a dedicated Department of Dramaturgy, rather than a general department of theatre studies or theatre science, we therefore propose to use the occasion of the 6th EASTAP conference at Aarhus to survey the multiple dimensions of the plural concept and practice of dramaturgy in theatre and related contexts.

Excerpt from the Call for Contributions

Introduction

Among the wide array of panels at this year’s EASTAP conference, some threads emerge. For example, ecologic and utopian dramaturgies are at the centre of four panels. Others tackle identities, exploring questions about intersectionality and liberation, which is also partly linked to memory and what is called “collective sensibility”. Alongside these contemporary themes, some perspectives on what constitutes dramaturgy, and how it has evolved until today, can also be found in discussions of practices and experiences shared by artists, scholars and theatre professionals. These many different views on dramaturgy today show how it can be a flexible and fertile methodology both for artistic practice and theatre studies. They also highlight the fact that this notion of “dramaturgy” can -and must- still be called into question depending on who is talking and what their specific research/artistic field is. In short, “dramaturgy” is still a notion to be debated and broadened.

The conference program bookends two days of parallel panels, in which attendees are invited to choose their path through a wide variety of talks, workshops and performances, with plenary sessions, allowing space for collective reflection. At the same time Aarhus is hosting the 8th edition of the ILT festival, with performances, plays and installations offering another viewpoint on the EASTAP conference. The dialogue between the ILT festival and the EASTAP conference, of course, offers a unique opportunity to consider the relationship between theory and practice, examining dramaturgy not just as it is presented in talks and academic papers but also in the works featured by the ILT festival.

We are an international group of Master and PhD students hailing not just from different universities but also different parts of the world, ranging from Norway and France to Israel and the United States. Our diverse backgrounds allow us to relate with the theme and ideas of this year’s EASTAP conference from a variety of cultural perspectives and in multiple languages. Many of us are both researchers in Theatre Studies and practicing artists, two dimensions that are also deeply linked in the conference program. From these different backgrounds, several questions will guide our approach to this year’s conference:

How the conference will broaden our own perception of dramaturgy? What other international visions of dramaturgy will we discover?

How might dramaturgy be explored and documented through digital tools and platforms?

How do the artists featured at this year’s conference themselves practise dramaturgy in their own work? Is it a separate role that they assign to a specific member of their team? How do they conceive of this role in their own creative collaborations?