Contents include: Editor\u27s Note; LMDA Conference 2013 Re-defining Risk, A Keynote Address; Ellliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy Introduction; Ellliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy Staging Latina/o Classrooms and Culture: DNA and Dangerous Dramaturgy at the U.S.-Mexico Border; Early Career Dramaturgs Envision the Future of Dramaturgy: An Ensemble-Created Manifesto; What is the Future of Dramaturgy? A Manifesto; Juan Radigan and the Gringo, or Why Chilean Theatre Deserves our Attention; Behind the Scenes in Bollywood: An Interview with Brian Quirt; National Theatre: Center Stage\u27s My America Project; Crowdsourcing a New Hamburg Dramaturgy, A Preview of The Hamburg Dramaturgy: A New & Complete English Translation. Issue editors: Sydney Cheek-O\u27Donnell, Debra Cardona, Janine Sobeckhttps://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1046/thumbnail.jp

To propose a theory of dramaturgy is an experiment. As such, it could be described as an attempt to solve some specific problems, by proposing concepts and line of arguments, which answers the questions. How to formulate those problems? Whenever we formulate a problem, we have already made important inclusions and exclusions. Such is the function of theory. Let us therefore try to be as explicit as we can. This chapter presents the outline of the project, and exemplifies how dramaturgy has become an issue in a world society.

This paper is focused on looking at the emergence and transformation of dramaturgy in the new world of theater and how it defined and redefined theatre making and in the same process got defined and redefined as a role. A dramaturg, broadly defined is a person dealing with text in theatre, however, this understanding has undergone has a lot of change since its emergence in the late 18 th century and has acquired a crucial position in the performance world today. Dramaturg, the lineage of practice behind this term began with Golthold E Lessing's association with Hamburg National Theatre in the late 18 th century as a critic attempting to 'enlighten' artists and audience alike about the mechanics of dramatic models. The description of the dramaturg in Berlot Brecht's productions stood as, a person mediating between ideological perspective of an idealist and the needs and priorities of actors to stimulate reflection and action in spectator. In the 1990s the scope of this position expanded as dramaturgs began to be employed by theatre repertories to advocate institutional interest. The above canonization of dramaturgical advancements is rather a crude and linear way of looking at the developments in dramaturgy. The role of the dramaturg to my understanding is that of a psychologist, one that reads, analyses the socio-political-economic conditions of the place and caters and mostly directs the needs of the hour. S/he reads the audience to know what needs to be told to them and how; one who reads the performers and works with them to tell them what and how the act could be delivered; one who works closely with the director and helps them in constantly imaging and reimaging the work. Eugenio Barba wrote about dramaturgy as a craft of the genius, " When the work is almost finished he stops and says that now it can really begin. ….. he disarranges ad destroys everything that has been done up to that moment. He draws other scenes and figures, which he interweaves or superimposes on the preceding ones, cancelling them out. He takes another canvas and on it paints the pictures that he has mentally extracted from the difficulties with which he was confronted while working on the previous canvas. " (Barba, 2004) This kind of comfort where one is starting at nothing, constructing complicated scenes and then discarding them is a mark of a genius, an artist who is not bogged down by discomfort. Dramaturgical sociology and psychology are lens that have been of great interest to scholars like Erving Goffman and Jacob Moreno and their understandings stem from Barba's writings. Goffman and Moreno have commented on how Stanislavsky's approach towards theater making began to challenge the relationship between actor-director, actor-audience so on. Stanislavsky wanted his actors to feel rather than just act this was a strong change that he asked for wherein the actors had to go through an entire new process of 'embodying' a 'role'. This change led to critics and playgoers alike change their ideas on what a good performance is — instead of praising actors for the sheer sense of suspense and melodrama they could generate as performers, the public now expected them to embody a role on stage, to become a character with multifaceted roles of his own that not only portrayed external expressions but internally affected the character, and thus the actor, the audience, the whole notion of the role(s) of self. One can

This paper is an attempt at providing a template for the discourse of dramaturgy and playwriting in the theatre. It is motivated by the inability of some scholars to juxtapose dramaturgy and playwriting professionally, thus, muddling both concepts and creating conflicting identity for budding academics in the theatre. Scarcity of rules or ideas that can guide students in the art of dramaturgy and playwriting in a profession where almost everybody calls dramaturgy playwriting and playwriting dramaturgy, hence, there should be an urgent clarification. An accidental sampling of the practice of playwriting shows that many people out there do not fully understand the concept of dramaturgy and how it works in the an organized theatre. Dramaturgy is beyond passionate narration of experiences which some have called playwriting, but a rare art of creativity with adequate training. This paper discusses playwriting and differentiates it from dramaturgy. The constant exposure in the practice will be clearly evident in the contemporary thinking of theatre practitioners.

As field, dramaturgy has a long history. We like to think of it as beginning with Plato and Aristoteles (or maybe even with Aristophanes). To grasp the evolution of dramaturgy we need to combine studies of artworks and processes, societal structures, and studies of media-matrixes, with knowledge from theatre practice, science and history. Any experiment describing an evolution of a field has to consider its starting point, and its epistemological prerequisites. Is a theory of dramaturgy at all possible and necessary? In this article, I will present some arguments from my research on theories of dramaturgy. Patrice Pavis: " We should, I would suggest, resume our theoretical labours, not necessarily by enumerating all the task of the dramaturge, but by looking for adequate methodological and theoretical tools, in order to think the new situation we are in. At stake might be the future of dramaturgy and its challenges.1 CHALLENGING EXPANSIONS An attempt to conceive a theory of dramaturgy gathers momentum in times when the concept and the functions are challenged by expansions. How wide a variety of different areas and professional functions can be managed by a theory behind the concept and its societal functions? In order to grasp the gravity and complexity of the situation, we need to identify some of the important expansions. I suggest a first study should consider five such parameters.