Dramaturgy
The past week has been professionally and artistically enriching for me. Unwinding myself from the major project I am working on but still in line with what I value most. I started the month of March with an undertaking that sustained the artistic activities happening in the previous month.
The Silliman University, through its Cultural Affairs Committee, has hosted the 2015 Dramaturgy Symposium and Workshop in Dumaguete City on the 2nd and 3rd of March. The project was spearheaded by the International Playwrights Forum (IPF), in cooperation with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Women Playwrights International. Aimed at developing young Filipino dramaturges, strengthening international links and facilitating exchange and stage readings of plays, the Dramaturgy Project in the Philippines is one of the many projects of the IPF in order to reach out to various countries and to educate and train young artists and writers on playwriting and dramaturgy.
The Dramaturgy Workshop tackled the interlocking branches of dramaturgy; the main workshop topic was Textual Dramaturgy with sub-topics about Production and Reception Dramaturgy. As continuation of the previous Dramaturgy Workshops on Textual and Performance Dramaturgy, the workshop for 2015 served as an up-training/advance learning on the study and practice of dramaturgy with a specialization on Textual Dramaturgy and on learning the craftsmanship of writing vis-a-vis with the Production and Reception Dramaturgy.
With the able facilitation of Professor Dr. Chang Hwa Gim, the resource person, who is a distinguished director, dramaturge and professor in the field of theater at the Department of Theater Studies in Sangmyung University in Korea. He is currently the vice president of the ITI Korea Center and the International Playwrights Forum. He earned his Masters at the Theater and Film Department, Dongguk University in Korea (1982) and majored in Dramatics of the Department of History and Philosophy, Munich University, Germany where he received his Doctorate in Philosophy in 1991. In the 1980s, he founded a theater group 'HANUL' and later worked as Instructor at the Department of Theater-Studies in Sangmyung University and served as general director of Korean Theater Studies Association. In 2002, he worked as director of the Korean Association for Drama/Theater and Education. He was the president of Korean Association for Drama/Theater and Education in 2008 and in 2009 was the artistic director of the Executive Committee for 'Korean Harold Pinter Festival,' the 'Korean New Playwrights Festival,' and the 2nd NAMHAE Island Festival.
In the proper workshop, we were introduced on the knowledge of drama-textual dramaturgy focused on the playwright and the basic six elements in storytelling: Who, When, Where, What, How, and Why? With a word to answer to each question, you can make a story! And from these elements, a simple script was written for a performance-production dramaturgy. For neophytes, the exercise was really something that would encourage them to pursue as this simplifies the very complex process of putting up details of the entire production.
On stage, we can see the complexity of each character and all the more when this same character begins to interact with other characters. And while the more you know each character by the way he interacts with others, for the entire process, what is needed is a creative mind to accomplish this goal. But this should not stop one from pursuing giving life to characters.
In the creative world, we create stories based on our authentic experiences, and somehow along the way, we project a creative image while being performed on stage. It is in the creative mind of the dramaturge to create a dramatic action in a situation that maybe distorted, factual or make-believe. For the performance aspect, in the mounting of the script, a theatrical feeling and motivation must be evident in the performance. On top of it all, the entire process has an influencing power on the way we they think and believe.
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