Dramaturgy NOW

A two-day international online workshop and forum titled “New World, New Art Forms, New Dramaturgies” is organized as part of the Onassis Stegi Future N.O.W. program. This workshop will consider the role dramaturgy has to play in the performing arts in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

Six female dramaturgs, from various longitudes and latitudes across the globe, ask themselves: what does “dramaturgy” mean, and what can it offer within the framework of artistic creation today? What dramaturgical processes are in play right now in theater, dance, and performance scenes across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe? How can we work, or rather, how can we work together in this unprecedented moment, where work in the arts is itself at stake. How can we think up new forms of art, and how can we collectively form new ways of thinking about art – and by extension, about the world – in the constantly inconstant “here and now” of pandemic-ridden 2020? On reflection, how can we live, how can we create – and how can we make dramaturgy together?

The aim of this workshop is to explore and record – by means of specific practical examples drawn from the work of the participating dramaturgs and artists – dramaturgical trends in the performing arts as they currently stand, on aesthetic, structural, and sociopolitical levels; to discuss the challenges that the performing arts are being called upon to face at a global level; and to work on ways in which dramaturgy can, in answer to these challenges, act as a space for the creation of politically powerful on-stage acts.

With one eye always on the artistic and sociopolitical contexts in which they work, the curators and invited dramaturgs will together be discussing the similarities and differences between the dramaturgical processes where they are; the challenges that the performing arts are being called upon to face at a global level; and the ways in which dramaturgy can, in answer to these challenges, act as a space for the creation of politically powerful on-stage acts.

Thank you very much for your interest in applying for the Dramaturgy NOW online workshop and forum of Onassis Stegi.

We are more than happy to know that there are so many dramaturgs out there – from Cyprus to New Zealand and from Chile to Israel – who share the same wish to invent new protocols as to how we work in the here and the now!

The response to our call has been unexpectedly warm and the applications received were many and extremely interesting, from all parts of the world. In light of so many responses and thought-provoking submissions for the workshop Dramaturgy NOW, we were motivated to design not just one but two Dramaturgy NOW online workshops, to have the chance to meet and interact with as many applicants as possible. The first workshop will take place as arranged and the second workshop, named Dramaturgy Dinner, is to be held online on Friday, November 20, 17:00-21:00 GR time (16:00-20:00 CET) addressed to a second pool of the applicants.

Dramaturgy Dinner speaks to the urgent questions of how we work together now and what is the scope and role of dramaturgy in this pandemic context in a more discursive model, aiming to further examine the topics raised in relation to our ongoing practices and the challenges we are facing artistically, socially and politically.

Setting up a dinner-like framework that resembles the ancient Greek symposium – an archetypal form of sharing knowledge and creating discourses, a social gathering where people met to drink, eat and discuss issues of shared concern – we intend to keep on coming together, discussing collectively these pressing questions, the issues raised during the first workshop and the open forum, as well as imagining and generating frames of thinking and working together that create spaces for common thinking against a permanent state of urgency.

To that end, Dramaturgy Dinner will be planned as an interactive form of exchange, based on principles of co-creation and horizontal decision-making processes, with the participation of some of our international invited guests and the contribution of interdisciplinary professionals with diverse backgrounds from all over the world who submitted their proposals for Dramaturgy NOW workshop.