W12.1 May 20 (Mon) Kim da young

 summary

Dramaturgy as a practice-based and practice-led discipline was created by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the 18th century. The Hamburg Theater employed him for several years for the position known today as "playwright". He was the first person to assume this role in European theater and described his job as a "dramatic judge" ("dramatischer Richter"), who must evaluate the most convincing and appropriate means of staging a particular theatrical work. From 1767 to 1770, Lessing published the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, a series of critical commentaries. These works analyzed, criticized, and theorized the current state of German theater, making Lessing the father of modern dramaturgy.

Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie and Laokoon and Hegel's Aesthetics (1835-38) with many successors, including Friedrich Hölderlin, Johann von Goethe, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. Writers emerged. , reflected in the stage language of theater as a unique art form.

German playwright Gustav Freytag attempted to synthesize the components of modern playwriting in his 1863 book The Technique of the Drama, published in English in 1894. It is notable for its outline of the principles of dramatic structure, including arcs of dramatic tension and resolution. The Technique of the Drama, called Freytag's Pyramid, is often considered the blueprint for the first Hollywood screenwriting manual. Charlton Andrews's The Technique of Play Writing (1915) represents his understanding of European and German dramaturgy traditions and dramatic composition.

The foundational work of the Western theater tradition is Aristotle's Poetics (written around 335 BC), which analyzes the genre of tragedy. Aristotle considers Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BC) to be a classic dramatic work. He analyzes the relationships between character, action, and speech, gives examples of good plots, and considers the role of audience reaction as an aspect of theatrical form. His "Rules" are today called "Aristotelian Drama". In the Poetics, Aristotle discusses many of the key concepts of Greek drama, including the moment of recognition of tragedy (anagnorisis) and the purging of the audience's pity and fear (catharsis).

Perhaps the most important successor to Aristotelian dramaturgy is the epic drama developed by the 20th-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Many of the innovations associated with Brecht as a theorist and writer of the stage, including the concept of the "alienation effect" (or Verfremdungseffekt) and the acting technique known as gesture, were intended to be a deliberate revision of the values ​​espoused by Aristotle.

Poetics is the first existing Western work on dramatic theory. The first non-Western dramatic work was probably the Sanskrit work Natya Shastra (The Art of Theatre), written around 500 BC to 500 AD. This work describes the ten main types of elements, forms and narrative elements of ancient Indian drama.

Interesting point

Dramaturgy is a comprehensive exploration of the context in which the play resides. The dramaturge is tasked to obtain expertise on: the physical, social, political, and economic environment in which the action takes place; the psychological underpinnings of the characters; the various metaphorical expressions in the play of thematic concerns; as well as the technical consideration of the play as a piece of writing (structure, rhythm, flow, and even individual word choices).

Institutional dramaturges may participate in many phases of play production including: casting of the play; offering in-house criticism of productions-in-progress; and informing the director, the cast, and the audience about a play’s history and its current importance. In America, this type of dramaturgy is sometimes known as Production Dramaturgy.Institutional or production dramaturges may make files of materials about a play's history or social context, prepare program notes, lead post-production discussions, or write study guides for schools and groups. These actions can assist a director in integrating textual and acting criticism, performance theory, and historical research into a production before it opens.

Points to discuss

What is Dramaturgy?