IF DRAMATURGY IS RESEARCH,
then it's a shared function between the dancers/performers/designers and me.

IF THE RESEARCH IST EXTERNAL TO THE PRACTICE IN THE STUDIO,
then I embark long before the rest of the team, but the rest of the group joins in once we have gathered.

IF THE RESEARCH IS INTERNAL,
then it's the group's job to sift the research with me to find the data that is explosive, curious, magnetic, worthy, personal, shocking, fresh, and absorbing...

IF DRAMATURGY IS SHAPING,
then it's my purview, and this is a constant job. 
(Shaping lets people see. Without the shape, it's all momentum. The shape forces the edges, the endings, the letting go of ideas...)

IF DRAMATURGY IS INQUIRY,
then it's never-ending. It Informs everything. 

IF DRAMATURGY IS ABOUT SEEING,
then I like to paraphrase Charles Darwin: Observe with and without reason.

IF DRAMATURGY IS NARRATIVE BUILDING,
then it operates in the making of and in the spaces in between the lives of the makers who enter the space to work. The stories are everywhere and the decision to employ any aspect of that story-charged space is a constant opening and closing, saying yes and saying no, wishing/hoping and denying.

IF THE DRAMATURGY IS GOING TO ENTER THE DANCE SPACE,
then the role of the body is the key. 

IF DRAMATURGY IS GOING TO DEPEND ON THE BODY FOR SOME OF THE DIRECTIONS OF THE WORK,
then embodiement becomes a tool. 

IF DRAMATURGY SUPPORTS DECSION -MAKING,
then we will spend a lof ot time in the unknown, where investigation and assignements provide fodder and possibility.

IF DRAMATURGY ULTIMATELY SUPPORTS THE AUDIENCE'S EXPERIENCE,
then being able to handel the competing loyalities of any given work is a critical skill. 

IF DRAMATURG SUSTAINS THE ONGOING NATURE OF MAKING SOMETHING,
then staying open to influence is on of its functions.



Liz Lerman: Dramaturgy as litany. 

Research as a tool for dramaturgs?
...implies the question of framing. A researche frames material for considerdation, whether they are found outside or inside the rehearsal room. The work involves locating a point of focus, drawing edge, suggesting what might be included within that line, and saying "look here" to the other collaborators. It its an invitation to pay attention to the frame's contents, an invitation that can always be accepted or refused...(Katherine Profeta: Dramaturgy in Motion.)

The dramaturg as the advocate for audience?
Where is it stated that advocacy required? The concept of advocacy implies that one must be familiar with the desires of whomever one represents. So: What does the audience want? This question is both as revelatory (in what tells us about the circumstances under which it is posed) and as preposterous (to actually set about answering) as Freud's parallel query about woman almost a century ago [...] it is also worth wondering if the audience itself knows what it wants. Or might there be something to present them with that they, not knowing what they wanted in advance, will nevertheless find desirable? And what sort of pleasure, what sort of desire, with what level of complexity, is at stake? Can being made uncomfortable or disoriented also be an object of the audience's desire?

-> Heidi Gilpin: " The task of the dramaturg in this context is to confront the effervescent necessities of performing the multivalent and simultaneously make it resonate for audiences as new form of perception".

This idea about viewership can also be found in the description of Marianne Van Kerkhoven "New Dramaturgies": "The new dramaturgy is also looking for a new relationship with its audiences to share in the multiple points of view, or at least alienate it from its "normal" way of viewing".

The Ignorant Dramaturg (Essay of Bojana Cvejié, dramaturg with Xavier Le Roy"):
"[Some argue] that the special duty of the dramaturg's critical eye is to go between the choreographer and the audience, so as to mediate and make sure that communication works on both sides. But this turns dramaturgy into pedagogy, where dramaturgy puts herself in the priestly or masterly position of the one who knows better, who can predict what the audience member see, think, feel, like or dislile. We, makers and theorists alike, are all obsessing far too much about spectatorship, instead of wisely relaxing, as Jaques Rancière wrote in "The Emancipated" Spectator" and trusting that spectators are more active and smart than we allo ourselves to admit. My position would be to fiercely object to stulification of this kind, the patronizing presupposition that audiences will not understand if they aren't properly - dramaturgically - guided". 

THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR (JACQUES RANCIÈRE)
- Concept of equality of message to impression -
"Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting...The spectator also acts, like the pupil or scholar. She observes, selects, compares, interprets. She links whats she sees to a host of other things that she has seen on other stages, in other kinds of place. She composes her own poem with the elements of the poem before her. She participated in the performance by refashioning it in her own way". 

So audience is active all the time, they are composing meaning all the time.

The emancipated spectator "composes her own poem with the elements of the poem before her"...