Synne K. Behrndt

Synne K. Behrndt is a dramaturg and lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Winchester in United Kingdom. Her areas of research and teaching include devising, cross-disciplinary practices and new dramaturgies. She has published the book Dramaturgy and Performance (2007), co-written with Cathy Turner with whom she has also guest edited a special issue on ‘New Dramaturgies’ for Contemporary Theatre Review (2010).

Inspired by the conference’s ‘Call for Participation’, Synne Behrndt would like to address the question about the dramaturg and the notion of usefulness. It is perhaps fascinating that the question about usefulness often comes from dramaturgs themselves. On the one hand this may happen because they are often having to explain and articulate what they do and why this may be useful, on the other hand the sometimes fluid and contextual nature of the job naturally produces an element of (positive and productive) doubt about actual purpose or even role within a process. Behrndt is working primarily within a UK context where the terms dramaturgy and the dramaturg have made a relatively recent entrance into the theatre vocabulary, and interestingly this experience has presented her with the opportunity to re-examine her own assumptions about the dramaturg’s work. In other words she has had to not assume that she is useful. In this paper she would like to take the opportunity to talk about the questions that arise when a context is negotiating the dramaturg for the first time. She should declare that her interest is primarily motivated by a curiosity about the nature of dramaturgical thinking, and thereby an interest in what it is a dramaturgical presence can bring or not bring to a process. She will therefore refer to (devised theatre) projects that she has worked on in order to extend the discussion to actual working processes.