ABSTRACT
The development of digital technologies poses significant challenges to the dramaturg and their time-tested role as interpreter and historian of the dramatic text and facilitator of theatrical production. However, as Michael M. Chemers and Mike Sell explain, the existing work on the relationship of theatre and technology tends to be historically and culturally limited. They advocate a “systemic dramaturgy” that argues that technology is the original problem of theatre that extends to its origins and across global traditions. In this chapter, they apply this systemic approach to dramaturgical education to envision a dramaturg who has the ability to articulate their own ideas about theatre but also who engages intelligently the historical, social, cultural, economic, and political systems in which theatre is made and experienced. To that end, they describe a pedagogy that reframes the relationship of performance to technology, rehistoricizes the relationship of performance and technology, and reorganizes theatre history topics to highlight the dramaturgical challenges shared across times and places, with a lesson plan for classroom implementation.
