ABSTRACT
I’ve been thinking about where dramaturgy was when I began my career in the 1970s and where things are now. I went to grad school at the Drama School at Yale in the then D.F.A. program for Dramatic Literature and Criticism. Dramaturgy was unknown. My entire experience with dramaturgy happened in my third and final year. It’s odd that I have no memory of how I knew about the profession (though since I had lived in Germany and spoke German, perhaps somehow there I had heard of it?). I must have known something because I went to see the ever-accommodating dean, Howard Stein, and told him what little I knew and suggested that since Sean O’Casey’s C ock-a-Doodle Dandy, directed by Bobby Lewis, was about to go into rehearsal (and is there a play whose exploration more calls out for a dramaturg?), perhaps I could try it out. Dean Stein called me back to his office a few days later, saying he’d spoken to Bobby and I should go see him outside the rehearsal room on their first day. I did so. I hope you know who Bobby Lewis was. I did and because I had been hired for my very, very first job in the theatre by Bill Ball at the American Conservatory Theater, I knew, let us say, the type – grand, great lineage and history, in Bobby’s case The Group. I knew all this from the lowliest perspective, and I was of course scared to death. “Darling, Howard told me all about this and I’m thrilled. What a great idea! Why don’t you run off to Sterling Library and find out everything about the play – and come back and see me on opening night!” That was the extent of my dramaturgy experience at Yale.
