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Dramaturgy: A Post-Theory Pedagogy

The purpose of this essay is three-fold: 1)to re-evaluate Susan Sontag’s “erotics” and bell hook’s “erotic pedagogy” that could counter the logocentric split of mind/body, text/performance in the classroom 2)to examine recent discourses of performance pedagogy that recalls our body as a new epistemological and ontological center 3)to suggest dramaturgical approach as the “third” pedagogy that could valorize the liberating “post” perspectives of the first two but at the same time keep searching for possibilities of “universal” understanding through hermeneutic/performative engagement with the text/past. A dramaturg is a member of the artistic team of a theatre production who is in charge of interpretation/transformation of a dramatic text into a meaningful living performance. In a dramaturgy class, students are encouraged to confront the past and consider how the voices/images from the past cause us to pause and reconsider the present. With an actual production in their mind, students explore different fields that surround the potential performance of a dramatic text. To have students perform as a production dramaturg is enabling them to appreciate both the complexity of the text and the learning process itself, of which emphasis is on the process and practice rather than on the final product and meaning. Students are asked to step into the role of the dramaturg as a way of understanding and experiencing how history and present converge (in Gadamer’s words “a fusion of horizons”) into theatre making.