Cross-Over Event!!
SSWAPAT x LMDA
A heads up before we dive in here: my understanding of the spiritual and mythical qualities of land, sea, and sky is based mostly on Avatar. (If you think I’m talking about the J*mes C*meron franchise, kindly exit the chat. I’m talking about the real Avatar. I’m talking Aang, Korra, and the as-yet-unnamed, forthcoming 2024 avatar from the Earth Nation.) (If anyone knows the people staffing that writers room…please be in touch. I would very much like to be a part of that.)
I say this because I haven’t done nearly enough research to borrow from or cite the myths and legends of indigenous beliefs about land, sea, and sky. I want to be clear that I’m not claiming that I know anything about these traditions. I am merely using land, sea, and sky as a prompt and metaphor.
Okay rad, let’s do it.
HELLO ‘TURG NERDS! (A fun term of endearment for dramaturgs that I’m workshopping!!)
It is my honor and delight to be writing SSWAPAT’s first ever crossover event! The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (yes, all of them!) asked if I wanted to write a little ditty for their news bulletin, and since I am not a fool I said “YES!”
They’re gearing up for their June conference in Banff, where the theme is going to be “Dramaturgical Landscapes”, which is also what I was gifted as a prompt for today’s writing. A “gift” because I get to nerd out in an extended metaphor, which is my favorite mode of writing.
I’ll admit that at first blush I was like “What in the sweet hell does ‘dramaturgical landscapes’ mean?”, so I asked for some clarification and was told to think of it as how to dramaturg through the lens of “land, sea, and sky”.
Bingo, baby. When I look through that lens, here’s what I see:
There are three kinds of plays: Earth plays, Water plays, and Air plays. All the plays lived in harmony until one day…the Fire plays attacked.
Just kidding. I’m leaving Fire out of this for today.
In this neat little metaphor, Earth plays are plays that are bombastic and gritty. Secrets are buried deep beneath the surface, and when characters or events collide, it’s on a tectonic scale. All plays are about change (god willing), but in an Earth play, it’s not enough that a single person might change. No. The world of the play changes over the course of the play. Earth plays are often solid and grounded in a very stable, well-built reality (although not always the same reality we live in day to day). People outside the theater world are, I would guess, under the assumption that Earth plays are the only kind of play. And who could blame them? They’re a very distinctive feature of the theatrical landscape! You can literally spot them from miles away! Like..Antigone is an Earth Play. Know what I mean?
Water plays, on the other hand, are (you guessed it) a little more fluid. They’re subtle and can change shape. When an audience leaves a water play, they may not immediately know what they’ve seen or how it’s changed them. But on the commute home, or at the next day at work, it will still be there, weaving its way into your thoughts. Water plays quench a thirst we didn’t know we were feeling. They clarify. Something cool about a water play is that it isn’t necessarily grounded in the real world or even a real world. It can sweep us away or wash out the muck of the everyday, leaving us feeling fresh. I felt this way after reading The Antelope Party by Eric John Meyer.
Air plays are wild, my dudes. They have no respect for the usual modes and structures. They can change moods on a dime, and they feel like magic because you can’t see how they work, but you can feel it working! Surprises come like a bolt from the blue. These plays can alternately leave an audience breathless or full of new inspiration—sometimes both in the same play. An example: Speech from Lightning Rod Special.
The dramaturgical landscape needs all three kinds of plays in order to be a healthy and sustainable ecosystem—very much like our actual home planet, by the way.
As dramaturgs (or ‘Turg Nerds, if we’re into that…? Temperature check…?), we have a particular role in the stewardship of this landscape: we are the guides. Shapeshifters with the special ability to see from above and from the earth and from the surface of the seas and rivers, it’s our job to walk alongside a playwright and show them where their play will thrive.
From where I’m standing, I look out at the landscape and see a whooooole lotta Earth plays. Sometimes a water play sneaks in there. But as the steward of my little corner of the world, I’m seeing that the Air quality has diminished drastically.
Air plays, as I said, should breathe life into us. They should take our breath away. They should clarify. I don’t know about y’all, but all that sounds like a play that’s fun and a little capricious, and I want more of that in the ecosystem. Right now it feels like capital-T Theater is ignoring the fact that we’ve just spent the last three years in darkness. We’ve been living in an Earth play that has changed our world fundamentally. Isn’t it time that we get to take a little breather? Have a little fun? Remind ourselves to look up at the sky and wonder at it for a while? Feel the sun on our faces and let it lighten the load a little bit?
Maybe in your corner of the world, the world is flat and needs more Earth plays to liven up the topography. Or maybe you’re drowning in Water plays. Whatever it is, this idea “Dramaturgical landscapes” has been massively helpful to me in my own practice as a dramaturg. Now when I look out over the verdant and abundant world of theater, it’s easier for me to see where I can help to make the ecosystem more sustainable.
And that’s the goal, isn’t it? Not only do we all want to have a job doing this, we also want theater to be an abundant, nourishing space. Right? Right. How cool, how awesome, that in our capacity as dramaturgs, we get to be on the front lines of all this world building.
Big thanks to LMDA for inviting me to write this! And big thanks to you, reader, for subscribing to SSWAPAT. And hey, if it was LMDA who led you to this newsletter, you should subscribe! Make it easy on yourself by using this button, eh?
And just for fun, here’s a poll: