Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility

What can we know? This study--aimed at students, teachers, and theater artists--argues the centrality of this question to dramaturges, dramaturgy, and a dramaturgical sensibility. It suggests--from two perspectives, Landscape and Journey--that the attempt to know the dramaturgy of a play is little different from the attempt to know another person for whom we care. Part I explores the landscapes of conversation, pleasure, and pattern as places in which a dramaturgical sensibility encounters knowledge, loss, subjectivity, time and inquiry--elements central to its composition. Part II follows the journey of rehearsals for Antony and Cleopatra at the Guthrie Theater in the fall of 2001 and winter of 2002, focusing on ways in which theater artists engage, explore, and respond to a play's dramaturgy from the first steps to the final previews. Geoffrey S. Proehl teaches, dramaturges, and directs at the University of Puget Sound.