ABSTRACT

The dramaturg is potentially the artistic director’s Good Angel – a corrective necessity in his dealings with Board members exhorting him to take the safe way, with managers asking him to toe the bottom line, with audiences proving unresponsive to challenging works, and even with reviewers displaying impatience with the laborious process of building a company or developing a playwright. As the humanist in the woodpile, it is the dramaturg who must act as the conscience of the theatre, reminding it of its original promise, when it threatens to relax into facile, slack and easy paths.