ABSTRACT
At Shakespeare’s Globe, the collaborative atmosphere of theatre is heightened by using a team of student dramaturgs for each production. Most theatre programs that allow this are geared towards students in dramaturgy and directing. Shakespeare’s Globe (in partnership with King’s College London) offers students this opportunity while completing coursework on the Shakespeare Studies M.A. in the English department. My differentiation here is that while performance M.A.s often offer some training for dramaturgs, those in English Literature usually do not. Before the season starts, select M.A. and Ph.D. students working at Shakespeare’s Globe have the opportunity to answer dramaturgical questions from members of the company. Instead of assigning a specific dramaturg to each individual production, Shakespeare’s Globe allows a team of five to six emerging academics to discuss the questions and responses together as a collective unit. In this article, I will use the collaborative model at Shakespeare’s Globe as a case study to show how the dramaturg can be used as a function, instead of a job description, one that trains and hones students’ research and information literacy skills for wider use. I will begin by describing the model used at Shakespeare’s Globe and move on to discuss why this model is important in the changing nature of dramaturgy. It is my aim to demonstrate how the skills and expertise required of a dramaturg can be parlayed into a career elsewhere in the academic or theatrical world by exploring the unique model for dramaturgy in place at Shakespeare’s Globe, pioneered by Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Courses and Research. There have been two distinct periods of research at Shakespeare’s Globe, one under the direction of Andrew Gurr, and another headed by Farah Karim-Cooper, which began in 2006. This article discusses the second and current phase of the Research Department, under Karim-Cooper’s direction.
