Dramaturging for ASCTC

Here is a post from one of our beloved dramaturgs, Paul Rycik, sharing what it means to be a dramaturg and some of his experiences in the Timon rehearsals

In some ways, a dramaturg is like the twine of the theatre world- at first people don’t know what to do with it, but it always comes in handy. The job itself is often not very well defined, which means that a dramaturg’s responsibilities change on a daily basis. Therefore, when I came to work at ASCTC, I knew that the best policy was to expect the unexpected and sure enough, I found myself doing a huge variety of tasks before and after rehearsals began, from creating annotated notes in the script, to writing character descriptions, to creating a dramaturgy website (https://sites.google.com/site/timonofathensdramaturgy/home).

I view a dramaturg primarily as a resource for the actors. When rehearsals began, I made myself useful by giving workshops and lectures on the play and providing packets and other information to the actors. I also served as a text coach; each actor came to me and we would discuss the meaning in the text, and talk about how to apply those ideas in their performances The campers listened very carefully to everything I had to say and brought a great deal of creativity. One particular area I feel we had great collaboration on was implied, or embedded, stage directions, an instance in which subtle cues in the text direct an actor to gesture or laugh or move in some way.

Together, the director, the two counselors, the actors, and I have mined this play’s text and discovered a treasure trove of rich humor, social commentary, and incredibly complex characters. We spent a great deal of time figuring out what each character is saying and why he or she talks the way they do. Some characters in this play speak in a very long-winded manner, using hyperbolical text, noting these tendencies gives the actor clues about their character’s personality. Other characters like Timon and Apemantus frequently speak antithetically, juxtaposing words like “dark” and “light,” possibly because the characters wish to see chaos in Athens. All of the actors are working to find the richness in the text and use it to create and costume their characters in very imaginative ways.

One of my favorite moments of the rehearsal process was the day the actors created a framing device for the play. The director wanted to create the market place of Athens for the first scene and gave the actors free reign to interpret how to represent it onstage. The actors found a perfect iconic device to represent many of the play’s themes of poverty and wealth: cardboard boxes. They strew the stage with boxes to represent shops, stands, goods, even the shields of the peacekeeping soldiers. Characters ran in and out, pressing their wares, and it became apparent that the Athens of this play is a place where most residents are profoundly poor. Likewise, the boxes became Timon’s banqueting table and the cave he retreats to in the second half of the play, which showed the cast members’ great imagination and ingenuity. It was at this moment that I knew I was involved with a great production and that this group of actors was well suited to taking on this challenging and difficult play.

Dramaturgs don’t usually get thanks for their work, since everything they do is invisible to critics and audience members, but I feel my reward is seeing these talented young performers take some of my ideas and use them to make their own performances richer to create a wonderful piece of theatre. The talent and enthusiasm of these wonderful performers and the chance to work alongside Jeremy, Caroline, and Francis on this production of Timon is certainly a reward in itself. I truly hope that when you see this production, you see its value is worth its weight in gold.