Dramaturgs in Practice Training Programme 2024 Sharing Session

Juliet Chia [JC]: Good evening. My name is Juliet. I am Centre 42's consultant dramaturg, and for the last nine months, I have also been the facilitator for the Dramaturgs in Practice Training Programme, which these lovely folks have been part of. This evening, these guys are coming to the end of the programme, and this evening, we are doing a little sharing of the experiences that they have. 

This programme is actually part of a suit of programmes at Centre 42 that build capacity and capability for dramaturgs in Singapore. It starts with the Introduction to the Dramaturgs' Work programme, which runs every year, and then this programme, which is kind of one level up, runs every three or four years. This one is really an opportunity for a small group of artists who are interested in exploring the role of a dramaturg to get together and be attached to two projects with our artist partners to practice what it might be like sitting in the role of a dramaturg. They are not attached to the entire project because our timeframe - it depends on the programme. They journey alongside a project for two to three months, and they're here to report on what it was like. I will introduce them, and then they'll just start off by taking us on a little journey of what they've been through. We have Shona Benson, Sonia Kwek, and Shridar Mani. Shona, would you like to start?

Shona Benson [SB]: Just bear with me - talking and operating PowerPoint at the same time doesn't come in the course guidelines... thank you, Juliet. Just to give you an overview of what we've been doing and have a discussion about some of the things that we've learned, some things we've been made aware of in this pretty unique position of being able to sit, as Juliet says, in the space of a dramaturg without actually having any responsibility because we are there as being trained. It's a really special place. If it's something that any of you in the room are interested in doing, it's something that I personally have found really beneficial in terms of exploring the work that it does, this slightly mysterious role, what does the dramaturg do?

It's been a really fantastic nine months. We had quite a lot of lectures at the beginning - quite a bit of round the table upstairs, all of us together, a little bit like going to school, but in a really nice way. Workshops - we were invited to the series about dramaturgs that Centre 42 was doing. We had a lot of group sharing and some one-on-one feedback sessions with Juliet throughout the course. The two key markers within the nine months, as Juliet says, have been these industry placements with Singapore companies and individuals who have supported our development, which has been really fantastic. 

The other thing I should add - what we all set out when we wanted to do this course was that we had our own personal objective as to what we were really looking into ourselves. One of the things that I was personally very interested in looking at, as a director, was looking at how a dramaturg's thinking and place and position sits differently to a director's, because so often, they're mixed together. And the director talks about, quite validly - lots of people in theatre talk about having dramaturgical thinking, which is absolutely valid. I just wanted to look very clearly how that would sit and feel differently, how the thinking and the approach would be different. 

I also actually, interestingly, at the same time, started doing an MA in Arts and Cultural Leadership at LASALLE, and I was really pleased to have this sitting alongside that, because as a creative, I didn't want to lose my connection with the creative side of theatre. As much as I really respect the management and leadership side, and obviously was doing that to really get to grips and understand that better, I really wanted to have a foot in the creative side of theatre too. That was really where my starting point for the sessions.

My first placement was with Dive, that Wild Rice did, as part of their development of new work that's being led brilliantly by Joel Tan. Dive is a new play written by Laura Hayes. Joel Tan was the overall dramaturg for the work, but what they were looking at was also an extra set of eyes, someone to take on this role of what is often termed 'first audience', which is very much a dramaturg's position to sit in. You give feedback on what you see when the play is up and in a position to be running. What I did in that role was I watched the first stumblethrough run, and went to a rehearsal a few days later and gave some detailed feedback via a written report. We were meant to be having a meeting, but it was very much - we all understand that timing, time was short, pressure was high, and there just wasn't that space and capacity within everyone's days to have that meeting, unfortunately. 

My initial thought was how the director and the dramaturg sit differently and feel differently when I went into this as my first placement. In absolute transparency, I went in, and was really aware that, as a director, I would not have directed the piece like that, which was quite hard, but was really good. I realised I had to step away. My natural instinct was to look at it as a director, but I was very conscious of having to remove that thinking and look at how I would support the process. It felt hard at first, but the benefit of that was really good, because it really forced me to step away from that director role. 

I think the looking and reflecting on a lot of what I learned, and there was a lot to it, even though I actually wasn't in the room that much - one of the things was I think we often ignore our gut instinct, and I think as artists and creatives, we're very aware that we have one. I think that happens not just when we are responding to work, but also when we are responding to interactions within a team. And it can be uncomfortable at times, but I think we really have to acknowledge that. I think when I reflect on the dynamic - this is not to put any blame, this is not a criticism of anyone, but I reflect now that I probably wasn't the right fit for this role, and that, more importantly, Joel was such a great overall dramaturg, and the circumstances, actually, as well, which - we weren't ever, no one was ever [unclear] out, was very unfortunate. Laura Hayes' mother actually died just before the production, so Joel by default ended up taking a much bigger role in his position that obviously would never be planned, so the dynamics shifted, and he was in the room much more than he would otherwise have been, quite understandably.

On saying that as well, what I didn't do, and I regretted, was being very clear about what my role would be, and developing an understanding between me and them about what it would be, and understanding from them what they really wanted from me. I think that was an element of - first time, trying to please, trying to do the right thing. I'm not pleased with not having done it, but it was a very good reflection - next time, I should make that clearer.

The other thing was staying curious, and that was something that I've been very aware of going through this process, looking at something from a point of curiosity, rather than reflecting on an opinion, which can seem judgmental - but a curious interest and genuine care and interest in the work and what the artist is doing and how I can support the artist.

Another reflection was that to stay impartial and stay detached when you are not is really difficult, and I think that comes from a passion that we all come to this place with. It was really good. It also provided opportunities for some very difficult - not difficult about, but it was interesting having conversations as a dramaturg with the director, and we have talked in our lectures about the different methods of doing that. And actually, what was great was actually being in this test case, actually having to really put them into practice in real life, but not real life. So that was really great. 

My second placement was very different - whereas I'd been first audience with Dive, which is right at the end of the development process, I was working with Jean Ng as the director on No Particular Order for ITI, so I came on board right at the beginning of the process. Obviously, No Particular Order, even though Jean and Joel had, in their different ways, been involved on the previous project, they were wearing very different hats in this one. I was involved in the development stage, working very closely with Jean as the director on this piece. 

Because of learnings from the previous one, I was able to be much clearer, and came to it with much more - absolutely no way have I learned all the tricks in the book, or all the ways to doing things at all, but I definitely knew that I was coming into it with more confidence than I had done before, just with entering as we practice it; it gets better. I was able to be clear about what my remit was with her, and we were able to talk very openly about how the process may work. 

Supporting the development of the world of the play was very much part of it at that stage, early on - script analysis, both for her and within the room with the students, and being in the room with them as they were doing the development work, and contributing to the roundtable script analysis discussions with the students. It was very different working with students, compared to, obviously, professional actors and professional creatives - in terms of the whole space, where, in an education setting, obviously, a lot of the remit is to support the learnings of the students. 

I have to say, I had been slightly apprehensive, initially, about doing this placement, because at the same time, I was also directing a piece at LASALLE, and thought, maybe the crossover of working with two different groups of students - and I was always conscious of this shift between director and dramaturg. But actually, what I discovered was it was very interesting to have the two sitting so close together, because it allowed me to step from one, and very consciously step into another.

What I felt from taking those steps and being in both was that working with students is a very nurturing environment anyway - you are encouraging them to explore. There's more risk-taking than there is in a professional setting where time and money is short. There are some luxuries that one can afford in an education setting, which were really valuable to have, I think. One observes them, and one also thinks, gosh, how nice a professional setting would be if we could also have some of those luxuries, to take more risks. I think that's very much a role that the dramaturg can help facilitate, in terms of supporting experimentation, export, looking at more development, looking at how we really craft the world of a play.

Reflecting on that, I think one of the key things I was very aware of in this one was that the relationship with the director, in this case, who was my main point of contact - but also that would be with anyone - is a really critical relationship. I think it was much easier because of the lack of pressure and because of the timing when I came into this project to have a much more open and - playful is the wrong word; you would never describe it as a play, but it was a very exploratory, mutually respectful relationship, and that was a really valuable one. 

One of the things that Jean pointed out to me as well was that - and it's really important in terms of looking at the role of the dramaturg - when the dramaturg is working with someone on a project, that someone, whoever they may be - a director, the writer, producer, whatever it is - they need to want to be there. And that comes from a variety of different things. There needs a trust between the two of you and a good working relationship, which thankfully, because of where it was, this one worked out really nicely, and I have to credit Jean for that. It was very clear - and this becomes more apparent when you are having this sort of observer role - is we all make work differently, which was a great thing I felt to witness; I know we kind of know it, but it was really good to see it. I think it also helped open up a dramaturgical thinking that there's always different ways to - what do they call it? Crack a nut, peel an apple, whatever it is, slice something? There are many different ways of getting to the same thing, and none are right or wrong, and embracing all of them and accepting that they can happen is something that I think will inform my dramaturgical thinking going forward. 

The other thing was clear from - reflecting on both, but particularly in this one - is that teams are never perfect. I draw also from some of the MA learnings on leadership. You can have all these great plans for teams, but personalities affect them. And dynamics in the group, however careful you are to craft them - there's always personal issues and life issues. And I think when we are in a profession where life and work moulds very much together, we have to be really aware of those and sensitive to those. There are opportunities there for the dramaturg, in terms of supporting how those relationships work, both in terms of how we develop work, and how we physically work as a team. I think there's not often enough given to - you think about the teams that we start and dismantle very quickly, within the world of the performing arts. We sometimes forget that we're creating really complex teams, and if you were doing them in many other industries, there'll be a lot of team planning and organisation. You just assume roles, and that's something I think is an opportunity for a dramaturg, in terms of how they can help facilitate that, how they understand how the roles mix together, and how then they can support the whole process generally.

I think my last point is that the development stage of a piece is a much more comfortable fit for a dramaturg to come in. In contrast to my earlier piece - it was right at the end, and I said to everyone, opening night is just looming, it's terrible, and everyone knows how fraught that is - but again, when I was reflect, it's actually Joel who'd been on the piece from right at the beginning, was in a much more comfortable place with how relationships were working, and it cemented to me to have a dramaturg involved as the way along one can, and to have the beauty of that luxury is a really great thing for the development of work overall. 

This is to summarise some of the things - being clear about the role I've talked about, it's because we all come to things with assumptions, and particularly this role, dramaturg, people think it's a whole load of different things, so I think to be really clear, the onus is on the team, but also the grander ecology of how we all work to educate people more about what both the dramaturg role is, and also being able to articulate clearly what any of our roles are within a team. Nurturing relationships and building trust is such an important thing. It's so hard to do. We've talked about this quite a bit within the groups - how do you establish trust when you don't work with - you haven't worked before, and you're Zoomed into something. I think looking at the ways that we talked with each other, the way we look at our body language and have conversations is really important from a dramaturg point of view. A lot of the premises, coming to the work with care - care for the artists who are making the work. I think that is the foundation what all of us are starting form.

The other thing which is harder to do than say, I've realised, is active listening. It's really hard to think you're listening - to listen and stay present and not be thinking about what you're going to say next is a skill and a muscle which I'm very aware needs to be worked on more. Um, slight typo, CPR is not CRP, which is critical response process; that was a deliberate typo to say that it is very much the lifeblood of dramaturgy, and keeps us all going, even when we think we're not. Liz Lerman has developed a process called critical response process which structures the way we observe and we ask questions and we interact in a - actually, it can be any setting, but she comes from a dance background, so in terms of creative industries, it's a really valuable tool. We did it in our class - we thought it would be easy; it was much harder to do when you're actually doing it, but it's definitely been a backdrop to everything, when I've been trying to have conversations...

Staying curious, as I talked about, the approach of care and curiosity is absolutely key. By coming to it with that sense of curiousness, it takes away an opinion, because it's a genuine interest - why someone's doing something, and helps them stop being defensive about it, and doesn't feel that they're being criticised or attacked in any sort of way. 

The other thing I think is important for a dramaturg is you have a responsibility to the overall vision of the play, but also it's important to notice the small details too. I think being able to move between both states of view is a really important one - most importantly, for the people that you are directly reporting to; in my case, both times, it was directors. 

The other thing is time - we talked about where we sit as a dramaturg when we come into a piece and how it's easier at the beginning when time feels much more expansive. Through doing this course, I've become very aware of - I tend to rush conversations sometimes, and want to sort things out and get things done. But actually, it's part of the active listening - the simple thing of taking a breath and taking a bit of time, not feeling one has to respond straightaway, has been a really valuable one. And also instilling that with those you are communicating with as well. There's even been time where I think what's been really helpful is to be saying, to admit, sorry, actually, can I get back to you on that? They're simple things which seem so obvious when you say them, but in terms of not rushing and feeling that sort of scoping out in that exploratory thinking, the process of having sat in the role of a dramaturg, and being able to do that has been really valuable.

You want me to keep going, or do you want to go to the others? 

JC: Do you have a lot more?

SB: I can whiz through this really quickly. At the beginning, we looked at our own toolkits, what we'd offer. Having done this whole course, the learnings and the experiences in the different placements we've had - with my original objective of where does the dramaturg sit against the director's position - I think we look and see that the director is looking at the world of the play, and there is huge value in the dramaturg acknowledging that, but also looking at the world within which that world sits. There were huge advantages to both help inform the director, take away another role that the director often ends up doing themselves, supporting them.

One of the things that did occur to me a lot has been that we are in an industry where our mental health is one of the worst of any industries in terms of how overworked we are... we spend so long saying, oh, well, everyone sort of does a bit of dramaturgy anyway. But to look at that just being an extra layer on the multitude of other things that each different role does anyway - if a dramaturg can be the thread through which it picks up and links and catalyses all those other elements, be it the producer or the marketing person or the director or the actor are doing, and support that. I think that's a tremendous role. 

In developing the toolkit, I felt before, when I was thinking about it, it was much more practical. Now when I approach it, and it's coming to the end of this course, it will be very much in terms of looking at, because it is so vast, the role of a dramaturg, and it needs to adapt to the different circumstances in which you may be required to work, and the roles and the projects you are required to work on. It'd be very much in terms of the conceptual nature of how one works, and the experiences one can bring, and the support that one can give from a place of nurture and care. 

One of the things I found curious - one of the dramaturgs that, well, when we look at the history of dramaturgy, many people will cite Aristotle as being the originator of dramaturgical thinking through his poetics and his talk about - it's a place of bodies and time and space, which obviously is fed through most of what we all do in the arts. 

But interestingly, very recently, there was a study done by Google - obviously not coming from a performing arts background, but looking at how their teams worked most effectively, and they spent years, and I'm sure a lot of money, studying what it was that made some teams perform well, and some teams not. They produced huge amounts of data, as you can imagine - these computer nodes type people liked all the data, pulled it all together. They couldn't find any obvious correlation as to why some teams were working better than others, but then someone else looked at it and explored it in more detail, and what they found was the key reason why teams worked - it wasn't to do with the knowledge or experience or dynamics or whatever, it was to do with the psychological safety that people felt by working in that team. The reasons for mentioning that is that they called the project the Aristotle Project, and given the dramaturg comes from such a position of care for the artist, as well as the art; to look at that, and how they really can support the team, to produce environments where they can create their best work and enliven our creativity at every step of the way, it is something that's really valuable. 

Lots of questions - I have lots of questions that will be in my toolkit which I can happily supply you. Very much about exploring who it is, what they want, and how best to work with each other. I think my final point on where next is that there's been so much talk about how we can't really define what a dramaturg does because they do so many things, and sometimes it's this, and sometimes it's that, and obviously roles change all over the place. But I think if we are to give the potential that the role of a dramaturg can bring to theatre - I personally, for all the performing arts, from the glimpse of what I've seen from both the research and learnings that we've had, and the experience we've had - I think the potential for the possibilities of making a huge difference to the way we all work, and what we produce, and how we work together as teams, and within society, to create real impacts for the audiences - it's really exciting. 

With that, I think we need to stop saying we can't define it, and we have to define it in the same way that we define the director, but they always do different things; a producer, they always do it - we need to be clear, and be able to competently talk about what that is, and once we can package it right, I think we can really start championing its worth and its value. 

Finally, thank you Centre 42. If anyone's interested in doing this, I would highly recommend it. It's been fantastic learning and exposure to things I wouldn't otherwise have seen or got a snippet of, so thank you to those who organised it, and to my fellow teammates who've come on the ride too. 

JC: Shall we pass the [unclear] down to Sonia?

Sonia Kwek [SK]: That's a tough act to follow... I don't have PowerPoint slides, I don't have any material to flash to you except me just talking, which is very much like the work of a dramaturg, because it's all about talking; it's just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. It's all about having conversations. 

I'll go straight into my attachments because I think Shona already did a very great overview of what we did. My first attachment was with Lotus Root Support Group by Impromptu Meetings. That was a small independent production. It was Miriam [Cheong] and Shannen [Tan], and they were both performing, and also they wrote the script, and they wanted to direct and perform it themselves. They were going to do a staging here in Singapore, and they were also going to go to Fringe in Melbourne - so that was already planned in them when I started working with them. 

The thing that worked very well with them was that they were actively looking for a dramaturg, so I really got to be a dramaturg for them in my first attachment; they actually credited me as a production dramaturg, and I had real stakes involved, working with them. That was a really good experience for me. 

When I signed up for this programme, the main reason was that I wanted to try practicing dramaturgy in a theatre context, because although I studied in Intercultural Theatre Institute, I've graduated to do work everywhere but theatre. I was starting to do a lot of dramaturgy in interdisciplinary works, but I haven't been doing it in a theatrical context. So in my first attachment, that was one of my main goals, just to do dramaturgy in a theatre context again. And it was with a small independent production, so it was actually very familiar ground to me, because I usually work in more independent fields. 

I was actually hoping to do more text dramaturgy at that point, but when I joined the production, they were already done with the script; they were ready to go into the rehearsal already, so I didn't really get to do much text dramaturgy besides the very first session I had with them. I ended up doing more - playing to my strengths, which is movement dramaturgy. That was the bulk of what I did with them. 

They were very generous - I think once you start building a relationship with them, they also started to include me more in terms of asking for my feedback, not just about movement dramaturgy, but also as first audience, or general things to do with all their production stuff, but we would still focus more on movement dramaturgy. 

My key learning points - first one is you need to have the conversation about how you would like to have the conversation; that is directly quoted from Juliet. This really helped me a lot, because I was worrying a lot when I first joined the team. I was like, what do they actually need, what do I want to do? And then when I asked Juliet about it, she actually asked me, why don't you just talk to them about how to talk; what do you want to talk about, focus about? And once we did that, it helped to clear out a lot of things. The main thing I learned from that is you need to find out what the directors want to focus on, to talk about. And not just that - not just what, but you must listen to how they, and myself, want to have conversations, and how we can best have conversations. 

Juliet was pointing out to me, and this really helped me as well - it's not just about the abstract things, or ideas, or what I'm concerned about, but it's details, even timing - do you want to talk in the morning? Do you want to talk before rehearsal? Do you want to talk after rehearsal? Do you want to talk right after rehearsal, one week after rehearsal? Do you want to review the footage before you talk to them, or do they want you to see it fresh, and then just talk? And the next thing is also the duration of the conversation, because time is limited, as always. How long do they have to talk? How long do they want to talk? And the place and mode of the rehearsal, the discussion, as well, because whether you talk online, in person, before, after rehearsal, outside the rehearsal room, inside the rehearsal room, all these real things actually affect the conversation a lot. That was the main thing I learned from that attachment. 

The second thing for me was to assert for time with the directors to have conversations. I was very mindful that they are working independently, and independent productions, we do a lot of unpaid work. It was very clear - we are all doing extra work, and I think we were all very mindful of the time. We were too mindful, I think, with each other - because they were mindful they're taking my time and I'm mindful I'm taking rehearsal time. Actually, after I talked to Juliet, I realised that I need to have the time - I need to assert and ask them for the time and say, okay, we need to have the conversation - and then realise that they also want to have the conversation. So once we got over that politeness, it was much easier to go with the work. Also, Juliet reminded me that a lot of the dramaturg's work is the conversation - there's nothing else really tangible besides that, so I have to assert time for that. 

The last point for me, that was a key learning point, was to spend as much time as possible in the rehearsal room if you can afford it. That is up to you, and also to check the directors, but for me, spending time in the rehearsal room is to observe how they actually work, and how they actually need to work, versus how they say they like to work. You have to actually observe what they actually need to work as well, and then know how to adjust, what to offer. 

And also what Shona talked about - it's very necessary to build and nurture the relationship, and the best way to do that is just to be present and around. It's super underrated. The thing that helped a lot with them was that they gave me a schedule from the start, so i could block out my dates and times, so I would make sure I would always come down when I say, oh, come down. They would also value my time, because if they had to cancel rehearsal, they would also tell me before that. We would always be mindful of each other's time, and because of that, I was able to be present and around for a good chunk of their work, and we could also plan how our time could be used. So it was very, very efficient, and I felt like that was also because they wanted me to be around. That was really something that I also learned, like what Shona said, that you need to be wanted to be around as a dramaturg, because you will feel it if they don't want you around, and then you will also not be able to do any work.

Now I'm going to talk about what worked well and what could be improved upon. What worked well in this attachment is asking them what they actually want and need. At first, when I went in, I thought, okay, they will need research stimulus, and I was so excited, and I sent them things, and they told me it's great, but we don't have time to look at it, but please send us, we'd still love to know about it. Then after adjusting that, I realised that, okay, I don't have the anxiety about not doing enough - because that's my main anxiety; I was like, am I doing enough for them? What is it about me? Can I just be around? And I realised, actually, yes, that's what they really need.

The other thing was finding out what they want to hear, and what they actually need to hear. They like having options and they like me to give them tasks and stimulus. At first, I was very worried that I'd be overstepping, but actually, they said, no, we actually want that, to frame it that way, it's better than just giving them notes or observations or asking them questions, because what they really wanted was options to try, and tasks and stimulus. That helped me to clarify exactly how to say my feedback.

The other thing that worked well was realising what is important to them to receive in the limited time. I realised that, for them, they needed time to check in at the start - they needed 15 to 30 minutes to check in, talk, and settle. When I first came for the first rehearsals, I was quite anxious, like, oh my God, that's taking up a lot of time, right? We're just chilling. But as I work with them, I realised that the chilling is the work as well; it's part of the process. So we need to take care of that time as well, and need to do that together, and me being present for that is also very important. And not rushing that, because once that is out of the way, then we can work very efficiently. So knowing how they work, and knowing what they actually want to do in their limited time, is very important, rather than what I think works well for them or what is necessary.

The last thing that really worked well as finding out what's important to them as artists and clarifying boundaries of the work. Because the work of a dramaturg overlaps into many creative areas, right - for them especially, because they were literally triple threat; they wrote it, they were directing it themselves, and they're performing it. And that means that sometimes, they couldn't see themselves, so I had to be the one to see for them. The very important thing for us was to voice out directly, okay, how do you need to feel supported in your vision? We clarified a system of working from the start, so that we would make sure that I would not overstep into choreography with my movement dramaturgy. For instance, I would never suggest to them how to do an action, or I'll never give them moved to try. I'll actually help them to find it, refine it, but I would never actually tell them directly, oh, do this move, do that move. So we clarify that from the start, so we know we don't want to overstep the choreography. 

The next thing that we also clarified was not to overstep the directing. So it's very clear, before the start of a rehearsal, that they want me to sit in and workshop with them. We would start a session talking about, okay, what is the vision you have for this? So it's very clear that they vision and the things that they want to work on as directors are clarified to me from the start, and I use that as a checklist to work with them, and I workshop with them later on in the session. That was the system we developed for how we want to work together, and that really worked for us. 

And I realised that's something that is very important for them, to feel that they have their ownership of that as well. I think a lot of the anxiety - a lot of people, a lot of directors feel with the dramaturg is that they're going to come in to tell you what to do and take your creative ownership. So I think clarifying that boundary of what my role is, and how I'm not overstepping right from the get-go, was very good.

What could be improved on, to be honest, for this first attachment - I think the main thing that could be improved upon was just learning to be less polite, and just going straight into the work, because I felt like we were very, very, very respectful, too respectful of each other's time, because we were all freelancers juggling other full-time work obligations. So there was a lot of care and concerns about not stepping on each other's toes, but that made the engine a bit slow to start. But once we got past that, the relationship went very fast, and that was really good.

Now, my second attachment. It's like, heaven and earth. Heaven and hell. So bad! Okay, no, I wouldn't say that. I mean, the second attachment was really, really, really out of my comfort zone. It was Threads: The Emperor's New Clothes, which was musical theatre for children by SRT. So it's all the things that are unfamiliar to me - bam, a big organisation, musical theatre, and - actually, TYA I'm quite familiar with as well, but it was very specific, because SRT'S TYA audiences are very specific; it was mostly school audiences, all the bookings. So it was, wow - it was really, really specific. 

The other thing that I wanted to explore in this attachment was doing design dramaturgy, which is not very common in Singapore. Dramaturgy is already, people are like, what is this? And then there's another one now I want to throw in, I want to work with production designers for dramaturgy - people even more are like, I thought it was only for text, why do you want to work with designers? So I was really going in the deep end.

My key learnings points for this - okay, three points. First one - sometimes, all the director needs is space to hear and make sense of all their thoughts. The anxiety from the first attachment was amplified in the second attachment - the anxiety about, am I doing enough? Am I contributing? was even worse in this one, because I was like, I have no space to add on, to contribute. And I was anxious about that, because I realised that - compared to the first attachment, where I only worked directly with the two directors, and then maybe there would be the producer around as well, and maybe an SM, that's four people in the room, plus me, so it's very, very intimate. We could go straight to the point, be direct. 

But this one, the production meeting was like, bam, there's the artistic director of the company, the producers of the company, the production managers of this production specifically, and then sometimes the technical director will be there, and there'll be the designers, and the assistant director, and the whole room suddenly in Zoom is at least 10 or 11 people I'm meeting for the first time. And it's like, oh, wow. It was very evident in the production meeting, you can tell everybody has an opinion to say about something - sometimes related to the department, sometimes related to the company's needs or goals, and sometimes they would suddenly jump to talk about the other production they were working on, because most of the team in this production were concurrently working on another production because it's part of a company pipeline, and I'm not part of that production. So when they jumped, it's like, oh, okay. And then they jumped back, and you're like, okay! So I realised that I did not need to contribute more sometimes. I did not need to add on anything. Actually, sometimes, the dramaturg just needs to help the director make sense of what they're hearing, which is, from many different people, a lot of different opinions.

Next key learning point is - a dramaturg's work needs to be needed and wanted. I really felt that, because the dramaturg must be wanted, invited into the process to work together. This was not really the case with this attachment, because they were all very welcoming of me - but they were very welcome for me to just observe, to just be there, another person in the room. Because actually there was no real space for me, or any desire for me to be there to affect or make any dent in any of the working processes already set in place. They were very happy - oh, she's here to observe, very good - but there was no space for me to actually do anything, and they didn't carve out that space either, so it's very difficult to come in. And it was even more difficult for me, because I was just a dramaturg in training, so they had no real reason to actually accomodate what I could offer, or what I wanted to try out as a dramaturg, because they've got timeline, they've got money, they're running, running, running, a lot of things to do. So it was really hard for me, and I realised that if you're not needed or wanted as a dramaturg, then you shouldn't be there. You don't need to be there.

The last key learning point I have is the difference and similarities between a dramaturg and assistant director. It's pretty interesting for me because Daniel [Jenkins] already had a very long-time, trusted assistant director with him, called Eric, who's been working with him, and Eric's also attached and working full-time with SRT. So that was very difficult for me, because the role that the dramaturg sometimes fills up is the role of being the support, the sounding board, but all those things were already taken up for me by the role of the assistant director there. And, of course, why would he ask me, a random outsider just coming into the production, to talk about these things when there's his trusted long-time assistant director who has been with him for a very long time - it doesn't make sense to ask me, right? So I would just be there - sometimes it's just observing. Also, I think I took my cue from them, because I realised that Eric didn't really talk much during the big production meetings, so it felt very weird for me to come in and start talking in the production meetings. I more observed that they had more private conversations. I wanted to try to have that with Daniel as well, but it was almost impossible because of time. 

But I realised that the difference between a dramaturg and assistant director is that, for the assistant director, you still have to listen to what the director wants you to do, because you are directly assisting the director, right? So when I see Eric talking to Daniel, or sometimes Daniel talks to Eric, it's actually giving him, directly, things to do; sometimes it's really helping him to run a rehearsal, or whatever. Sometimes ask him, extra opinion, here and there. But I don't see Eric doing anything that a dramaturg does in terms of providing provocation, challenging, and contending with the director, basically, which is what a dramaturg really is about as well. That is one of the main differences that I learned, from assistant director and dramaturg. 

The other thing was that I learned a dramaturg's role actually is a lot about challenging and sometimes disrupting the process - in a good way, of course, for good reason. Just like what Shona said - it needs to come in more at a development stage. The timing that I came into this production was already - they already wrapped up their script. There was still time, but the difference is that, for them, they were working in a very specific company timeline, and, like I said, they didn't carve out space for a dramaturg, so there was no reason for them to - so when they developed, as they developed, I had no space to come in, because they had no space. They did not make space for conversations to happen. 

The timing that I came in - I looked back, and actually, it's not that bad a time to come in, but it was not about the time; it was more that they didn't have the space for me to come and challenge and disrupt - it was more like, they do, do do, alright, the decision, okay, next decision, okay, next decision. You have no space to come in at all. It was just very much business as usual for them, in a big institution, and there was a process that's been running for years. So me, as an outsider, entering to come and challenge and disrupt, did not make sense for them. It's not what they wanted, and also what they have no space for. 

The next two points I have before I finish is what worked well and what could be improved on. What worked well for this one was that I had a very, very, very good meeting with the director, the very first meeting before we actually started working on the production, where I sat down with Daniel, and we talked for more than an hour and I really got to know about the production, his process and working, and also about his practice and his concerns as an artist, as a director. That really helped me to straightaway, quite quickly, build rapport with him, understand him, because I literally had never met him before, don't know him, and he also doesn't know me. That was really, really good. That was something that I realised is important - to actually have that one-on-one time with the director, and it's good to have it at the start, before you work.

The second thing that worked well for me was that I got to witness a lot of difficult discussions in this big production pipeline setting. It was very interesting for me because usually I work in small productions, so it's a lot more intimate. But this one, you could tell that everybody was very specific in their role and specific in their concerns of what they're looking at in a production. Everyone has different agendas, and everyone is running on time - everybody has a different deadline they're looking at, so they always were trying to negotiate a lot of those things in the discussions. Sometimes it felt like the negotiation or the discussion that happens in these meetings were less about artistic or creative or abstract choices, which is what a dramaturg's work usually will be involved in, but a lot of it was to do with problem-solving, negotiating, and finding out how can yours work with mine. It was not really a lot of space for me to feel like the dramaturg can come in and talk about these things, because they were not - they were all concerned with more tangible outcomes and tangible things that needed to be changed, which is, to me - I felt like, as a dramaturg, that was not really where the conversation usually looks at.

The other thing that I also got to notice in this big production pipeline setting that was new for me was the roles of the artistic directors in the process, and the producers. As a dramaturg, I have never had to be aware of that so much as compared to when it's a big production setting, because a lot of time, I felt that, in these production meetings, when the company artistic director was there, then - when he comes in and cuts in and talks about what is necessary, everybody has to follow the agenda and listen more, because he's the overall head. I found that very hard sometimes, to then know exactly what the director was really thinking about in those settings. I needed to have one-on-one time with him, but then there will be no time for that, so it would become really hard to - after the very first meeting, I felt like we never had that time again, one-on-one alone, and it became really, really hard to actually know, what is he looking for? What does he want? Because all the things that we said at the start - it couldn't happen lah, there was no time for that because there's the artistic director saying this, but the producer saying this... 

The other thing that I got from this experience that was really good was that I managed to have a really good in-person conversation with their lighting designer, Gillian [Tan], at their tech, and why it was so good to work with her was because Gillian, among all the designers, was a UK-based designer, so she was actually used to having dramaturgs and working with dramaturgs. And she was quite obvious to me because during the process, her notes as a designer were obviously also a little more artistic-slanted sometimes, in the way she gave notes, so I could tell she was more used to also having those discussions. But when I talked to Gillian at the tech, when she shared her experience with me about working with dramaturgs, it was pretty obvious that it was in the development stage. So the stage that I came in was already a little bit too late. And she concurred, the same as me, that the time is very much needed. If you don't have time - and not just don't have time; actually, there is time, but if you don't factor in the time to make space for the conversations to happen, then even if there's time, it's just not going to be used for dramaturgy at all. That was what was pretty evident for me. But it also cemented to me that it is possible that it can work, but you must want it. She said that there is this experience of working with dramaturgs and production designers in the UK - it can happen and it does happen, but it needs to be planned way earlier, and if it's a big pipeline, it needs to be planned into the pipeline already, which was not in this case here.

What could be improved on, for me, was that timing and scheduling with a company that is working full-time hours is very difficult for a freelancers who has a full-time job outside. It was literally impossible, because unlike the first attachment - we were all very able to adapt to each other, and also, their rehearsal timings were after work, which also suited me - but for this one, they were working full-time hours, which is also literally when I was working, right, and there's no reason for the company to consider my schedule because I'm just a trainee, right? And I'm just here to be observing. And even if I wanted to do real dramaturgy work, I don't think that's how they saw me as. So there was no time that they could really consider to put me in. 

The other difficult thing was that there were different time zones and overseas locations involved in the process as well. At the very start of the process, there was actually a script workshop with their scriptwriters in the UK. Of course, I'm not going to go to the UK with Daniel. So of course that happened, and when he came back, it's like, okay, it's a bit different already from the last time I talked to you. And then, after that, there was also a production designer who was in Spain at that time, so we had to have three time zones at one point - which was the UK one, the London one; the Spain one; and then the Singapore one. It also happened that it was over Christmas and New Year's and then Chinese New Year. So when all this conversation started happening, there's so much time crunch, their scheduling became even more rushed. Versus the first attachment, they gave me a schedule right from the start, so I could block out my times. But this one, they were all working full-time for this production, this company, so their decisions were made sometimes last-minute. They'd say, oh, sorry, this meeting is not happening any more. I was like, oh, okay. And after, they'll say, oh, we are having a meeting later today, so you can join if you want. I'm like, oh, uh, I can't. Then, um, it's okay, we'll see you in the next one. So some of it started to snowball. I really realised that if you want to work with a big company and you are working full-time, I needed to also dedicate my full time in this attachment if I wanted to work with them, because a lot of these decisions that they made were decided on the fly. 

Also, Eric is literally with Daniel, physically, most of the time, which is where he can support him, which is what, ideally, I should have done as well. But, like I said, they were also working concurrently on another production. For instance, Wednesday, we said we have a meeting, I just talked to Daniel on Monday - but then, on Tuesday, he says, oh, actually, we shifted something already, or, me and Eric talked about it just now between the break from the other show - and then they already decided that thing. So they just make decisions on the fly, because they're working in proximity to each other, and a lot of it that's - a lot of knowledge that they have access to, I'm not privy to, and it's happening informally, all the time. That is the nature of working for a full-time company that I couldn't be with.

The other thing was there were a lot more processes and layers of people to get through compared to the first one. The first one, I can just talk directly to the two directors slash writers slash performers. This one, I can still talk directly to Daniel, but as Daniel got more and more busy, his message replies became less, so to find his schedule, I started to message the production managers instead. But after that, I also got passed from one production manager to another production manager, which is fine - they were really, really great. It was a big learning lesson, a learning curve for me, to learn how to communicate with production managers, and they would also communicate with me. It was really nice, because they would also update about when this thing happens, when this thing happens - but the problem is that it already happened. So most of the time I'm just finding out in hindsight, catching up on their rehearsal reports, or trying to get footage, or whatever. At a certain point, it felt like I was just bothering them for things, so it didn't feel that good as well.

And then when I did speak to Daniel, most of the time, it was just trying to schedule, or find the time to come, but there's no real conversation about dramaturgy. By the point when I started, when the production goes into rehearsal, that's totally out of his mind already, to think about dramaturgy. I did manage to go for one of their full dress rehearsals and also managed to go to their tech there, but again, all the decisions have already been made. I had a very good conversation with Daniel, again, at the tech, but he himself also admitted, yeah, there's no time already - you have to make a decision on the go, and go to the next thing, to the next thing. So there was a sense that if these layers of processes don't get broken down, to have the space opened up for a dramaturg to come in, it's just going to keep going, keep going, keep going, and the dramaturg cannot insert themselves forcefully into it as well. 

The last thing I think could be improved upon, which is something I think is my biggest learning curve, biggest learning point, that I'm really realising, is that in this kind of big group, production settings, I need to be not afraid to assert my role and what I have to offer. But I found that it was quite hard to do that with this company, because there were too many voices talking, most of the time. I really felt there was no real stakes for them, for me to be there - there's no real stakes for them to include me. It felt mostly I was inconveniencing them, and honestly, it did feel like I was still an outsider to the process, most of the time. It was very hard to feel like I could penetrate it, when I didn't have time to spend with them, and they didn't have time to make for me to come in. So that is the reflections, yes.

Shridar Mani [SM]: I have the privilege of being last. Maybe I will begin by actually talking about why I joined this programme in the first place. Some of you know, some of you may not know, my background is actually in opera. I am actually a musicologist by training, and one of the things about being a musicologist is that ultimately we do academia about music that other people perform, which means that our role is actually to think about clarifying intent, that a score is a score, how do you - there is history, context, and weight that gets lost over time behind it. How do you get back to the intent of something, and how does that translate to performance - so the job is to clarify intent. After 15 years as a producer, a lot of that work goes away because you're just concerned with doing - just getting a show out and moving on to the next show once that show is done, which is a very arduous process. 

So in a way, doing this for me, or coming to this for me, was a way of also coming back to this idea of the relationship between intent and performance, which I think is something that we all contend with, especially the highly producing-driven arts ecology - that relationship is quite contentious. So that was sort of a starting point to coming to this programme and thinking about that. And with that in mind, even at the onset when we were having our initial conversations before I even joined the programme, one of my big things was, I really wanted, especially in the first attachment, to be thrown very much into the deep end of things so that I - completely without any safety tethers; that was quite important to me, because you fall back on the things that you are familiar with, and I didn't want that.

My first attachment was with the T.H.E. Dance Company working on a production called Searching for Blue, which was an existing work that they were adapting for the ArtScience Museum in August last year. By the point that I entered the conversation, they had actually already - all of that was already firmed up, the performance was firmed up; they knew what they were doing, they knew who the dancers were, and all that was done. Not unsimilar to Sonia's second attachment, I joined halfway. Not that I would've been able to - might not have been much use from the beginning, anyway, because my background isn't in dance, and that's not a vocabulary I'm very familiar with either. In a way, it was good, because the framework was already set up, and I could come in at a point where they were starting the rehearsal process for the work. 

I think one of the mistakes I made at the onset was maybe not being very clear with the team, and especially with Swee Boon who was choreographing the work, what I could or could not do in this sort of environment. What that meant then was at the onset I was quite lost in terms of where I was situated within the rehearsal room and what my role was there. And the thing is that my panic-induced brain then falls back on the things that I do know, which is, unfortunately, producing. 

What happened then was that I felt this desire to have something tangible that came out of this for me and for them. What I then thought about was working on some kind of audience guide for the performance, because, obviously, it was in a much more public space than doing it in a black box where you had the intention of going to the performance. Anybody could sign up for it, it was free - so it was thinking of looking at ways of seeing the performance and things like that, which now in retrospect, I'm like, maybe that was not necessarily a good way to begin with in the first place. Actually, I felt that the observer role would've served me a lot better, going into this attachment just to be in the room and observe how things work, and just be there, be the fly on the wall, to be able to see the workings of the rehearsal process without feeling the desire to have to intervene or to be productive in that space. 

I think that was the big learning point for me from the first attachment. Even when I did the audience guide, I came into it with my understanding and assumptions of what that should be. And, I mean, I made it very clear to T.H.E. that this is really my exercise, please feel free to not use this at all - which they didn't - but it was really an exercise for myself. But then, on retrospect, I was just consumed by this need to have something tangible come out of this, and I think that was probably one of the biggest learning points from all this - feeling the need to resist that, feeling the need to resist anything tangible that as a dramaturg I need to do to make my role productive. That was something that I learned by being dropped into the deep end of the pool before I could swim. That was great - in retrospect, it was great; at that time, it was deeply disorienting, but it was great.

I think one of the things also was I wasn't really sure how to communicate with Swee Boon as well. I wasn't sure how to - like, what do I talk about, what do I not talk about? What do you want me to hear, what do you want to hear? What do you want me to say? These were all questions that I had, and I think they could have even been clarified from the beginning, but I think it was also my own not being able to sit in the discomfort that prevented me even having those conversations in the first place. That all came into play. 

So it was actually quite a difficult sort of month for me, because I was sitting in this place of deep discomfort, which was not a bad thing, but was a very disorienting thing. I think that coming out of it my biggest takeaway was, one, you don't have to be a producer all the time, but secondly also that actually the discomfort is fine - it's totally okay, and it's totally valid, and it's a totally nice thing to feel, especially when we were trained to just do the things that we do well and keep going at it. Being able to be not good at something was actually liberating in its own way. That was my observation out of the first one, and my reflections out of the first one. I think it gave me a lot of room and space to want to think about how to improve that process. And going back to this intent, performance, relationship of thinking about how - like, if you think about performance being the most produced aspect of it and intent being the least produced aspect of it, how do I shift myself away from this end and come closer to this side of it? That was my biggest takeaway from this first thing - how do I get back to intent and leave performance out of it, because it's not my problem, even though in daily life, it's constantly my problem.

The second thing I realised, and it also helped - correct me if I'm wrong, it was that ADN Lab in Jogja where this was brought up, which was this idea - I can't remember what were the Bahasa terms for it, but this idea of the dramaturg as - 

SK: Pendamping and pengantin.

SM: Yes, correct, as the companion and the provocateur, and that thinking about that duality really helped me a lot in terms of placing myself in the pathway of this work. When the second attachment came out, which was with Darryl - and again, it's like we had a bit of role reversal. Daryl has a novella called Shantih Shantih Shantih which came out in 2021, and there was some interest in turning it into - doing a staged version of the work. So I had an initial conversation with Daryl and the producer who was interested in making a staged version of the work, and then after, we decided that this was a good fit, and that it was something - also because text dramaturgy is something that I'm a bit closer to - and I took it on.

My first exercise was thinking about - and, again, this time I could go back to the producer's work - which was, how do I annihilate myself? How do I annihilate any sense of self from any of this, so that what I think or feel or want or need is irrelevant, and I'm only thinking about what can I do to help Daryl's work be a better version of itself? That really helped me to centre myself, so that when I came into the first meeting, I already had a very good sense of what were the questions that I wanted to ask and what were the questions needed to hear the answers from, to clarify the intent of, what this project is in the first place. 

For example, Daryl's novella is written in a series of vignettes that can be read in a various configuration of orders, which means that the sense of time is already quite different - the experience of time in the novel is different. But, obviously, when you move into the stage, the experience of time, no matter how you structure it, becomes quite fixed, because we all experience theatre as something in fixed in time, a fixed series of events in time. So one of my questions was: what is the role of time in the play versus the novella? How do you want to clarify - how do you want to think about time in the play? And then what I did was to just throw a bunch of exercises at him and be, like, how about you just - for example, some things were in monologue, and I was like, how about you write this in dialogue? Can you just write this scene in dialogue and see what comes out of it? So it was just actually me - I wasn't even telling him, oh, let's do this, let's try this, what is the picture of the work, what do you want to do? It was more just me being like, let's just play with these things, play with this, maybe next - let's just see what comes out of it, you know? And if he hated it, then all right, you hated it, and let's move on. If you love it, okay, great, then we can use this as a starting point for something else. 

I found, because there was a lot more room and space to play between us, it allowed for things to unfold very naturally. And when we had our last meeting, which was just last week, I could see that the play has come - in two months, the play has come really far. But it was nothing because I said, oh, Daryl, you have to write the play like this, if not it's not a good play - there was none of that kind of conversation. It was just me being like, try this! How do you feel about it? Oh, you don't like it? Okay, never mind - try this. How do you feel about it? Oh, I love it. Okay, let's hold on to this and let's see how we can move it. If you wrote this scene like this, how would it look like if you wrote this scene like this, how would it look like? It was this constant back and forth playing that made this a much more organic experience.

Also because we had no pressure to work towards any kind of performance because there was no end point set, we could just focus on the intent without needing it to go anywhere, or become anything or be anything. In a way, I found that, because of that, I could let the producer part of me entirely go away, because everything that would feed into that part of me didn't exist, so it could just be let loose in the fields until called back.

I think a very clarifying thing for me, a clarifying experience for me, in terms of thinking about what the role of a dramaturg really could be - which is, for me, the sort of provocation of play and experimentation - it was actually so much more - felt so much more organic to the process than just being the person who sits there, like, oh this works, and this is the work, that kind of thing. I felt a real sense of us having a con - not even having an actual conversation, but having a conversation through the work. And that, for me, felt like a really great way to wrap up my second attachment.

JC: I am going to open up to everyone here for questions or responses or anything. If you're still thinking about it, I might throw one question out here that you guys can respond to first, and then everybody can jump in. Now spending a - the nine-month mark of when we started, we started in May last year - what is the dramaturg that has been birthed? Who are you as a dramaturg now compared to when you started?

SB: Having just been birthed, quite wet behind the ears - definitely, you know, I think it is what's been demonstrated in terms of all the different experiences we've talked about. It's discovering our own language, in terms of how we work, and how we communicate as both - I think whilst it's important to look at the role as a whole, I think what we all bring to it as individuals is very different. I don't mean just us three, but I just think by the nature of it - there is no doubt in my mind, my confidence to be able to talk about the possibility of me working as a role, not in training any more, but as a proper one, is something that I feel I could articulate much more fully. So I think the birth's gone okay. 

JC: And could I ask you just maybe the start of what you would articulate as - 

SB: I think my approach to being a dramaturg is to look at any position at any point with a point of creative care and exploration, and the way we can work together as individuals and as teams to really explore courageously our creative output.

SK: To be honest, I don't think I discovered any groundbreaking revelation - I think it more cemented to me what I already knew about myself. I know I work best in small team settings;  I know I work best when I can work intimately with creators, and I can bring up that intimacy. 

I think one thing that worked very well for me, the first production, was that what their work is about aligns very strongly with things I also care about, and that means that we both share - me and the creative team had a lot of similar values in terms of working, in terms of care as well as care practices. In fact, they articulated that as well, and it was really nice that we could have a conversation about it. It cemented to me that as a dramaturg the things that I value, I can put that forward more obviously with the people that I choose to work with, and I don't have to be a dramaturg for everyone - I can be the dramaturg for people who share the same values and who are also interested in the same things that I'm good at offering. 

I think the other thing I'm very proud to say is that, I think, similar to Shridar, the idea of experimentation and playing is quite important to me - what I want to offer is a sense of spaciousness for the creators, for the artists I work with, as a dramaturg. That's something I really feel like is important to me, to articulate as a dramaturg. 

And the other thing that I find is also important to me as a dramaturg is to help the - I think particularly because I'm an independent artist as well, and more on the freelance independent experimental sphere, and I'm more comfortable working with artists who are independent, experimental, and usually refining or starting to develop their own practice. I realised that I'm also interested in dramaturg not just in terms of a production or project, but in terms of the artist - the dramaturgy of the artist’s practice is something that I'm actually very interested in. That's actually what I feel is also a gift that I'm able to offer to a lot of the people I’ve worked with so far, so I think that's something I would articulate, as a dramaturg, in what I can offer to the artist. 

For instance, my first attachment with Miriam and Shannen, I think sometimes there was this anxiety, because - different to Daryl, they had the production, right? They had to actually perform this at this time, and they had to go up. So sometimes it felt like they had discovered some things, and they really wanted to continue, but it didn't make sense. One thing that I think was very good for me to realise was to help them to remember that this is just the beginning of a long journey for you, and even if you discover something you can't use now, it's still an important discovery. You can keep it aside, you can remember - it can be the fuel for the next thing. I think that that helped me to also realise that a lot of artists, especially independent artists, need that kind of support from Dramaturgs. That is something that I found that I care a lot about.

SM: I think before doing this, I always felt like the dramaturg's work was as the person who had the most knowledge, but I've actually now changed that into, actually, the person who is in pursuit of knowledge, or is the person who - a kind of collective knowledge; asking why or how, seeking knowledge for the whole team, seems to me really at the core of the work as a dramaturg. It's actually in that curiosity that there's - a curiosity that's more exciting to me than the imposition of knowledge.

JC: Does anyone have questions or things that it sparked in your thoughts?

Daryl: I guess one thing that the three of you all reflected on was this idea, or the necessity, almost, working in a dramaturg from the very start, and having that particular mindset. And it sounds like - I'm under the impression that there are actually quite a number of places in this country where that mindset doesn't exist. Do you foresee that changing, that culture changing, in particular? Or do you think there's still quite a few challenges in that department? Because it does sound like the dramaturg is quite an important role, in the sense that it gives a lot of care, it shapes a lot of things, a lot of inquiry, in a way that people may not even realise they need. I'm just wondering what your sense is, on that particular front. 

SM: I mean, the short answer is yes, but I also do feel, though, that because we haven't really built a dramaturgy culture here, a lot of people do take on a lot of that role inadvertently, without really knowing about it. I can say that even as a producer, I do a lot of that work, but I don't qualify that way, or I don't tell people, oh, actually I do dramaturgy work, you pay me extra - I don't do that kind of thing, but that work is just there. 

I mean, it's like, my parents used to help with Experimental Theatre Club in the 1980s, and back then, it's like, oh, who needs to do costumes? Oh, costume, you can do ah? You do that. This show, you do - you know, it's that kind of thing. As time goes on, roles get clarified, it's just that we haven't gotten to the point where the dramaturg role is clarified. I think we will - we just need to - you know, lighting designer is lighting designer, costume designer is costume designer, set designer is set designer - so now it's time that the dramaturg is the dramaturg, and that it's not the producer or the company manager or the production manager doing all of this work. I think that's the step that needs to happen. 

So it's not that the work doesn't exist - it very much exists, it's just that it's being split up in the way that, in the 1980s, the people who did theatre just did everything - it's the same kind of principle. I think as we keep going on, that role will become clearer, but right now nobody has - it takes one person to do it, right? It takes one person to be like, sorry, no, I'm not doing the show unless I’m a dramaturg, unless we have a dramaturg in the room. Because if nobody does that, then it's never going to start, you know?

SB: I think Wild Rice are moving further towards that - much more than I've seen in any of the other bigger companies; certainly not SRT or Pangdemonium for example, from my experience. Anyway, that's not across the board. There's an interesting quote on this that I just pulled out that was relevant to your question - I hope I'm pronouncing this name right - Eugenio Barba has described dramaturgy as a synthesis, a weaving together of elements, and an act of cultural assemblance. I really like that quote because I think it's building on the fact that - and we've talked about this before - so many roles in the performing arts of theatre; everyone has a sense of the dramaturg, and everyone is doing, to a lesser or greater extent, the mini-role of a dramaturg, alongside all the other things that they're having to do, to produce, to get this creative art out there. To recognise that and actually state that and look at the role which pulls all those elements together - in a sort of institutional dramaturgy way, not just production dramaturgy.

There's so many different hats, different stages of first audience that one can use. But in terms of aiming for that to help support the production or the creation process and performance as a whole is a really important place to be aiming for. And obviously, this in itself is part of building towards that. I think education within the arts institutions about what the role of dramaturg is, what dramaturgy is doing, having more people talking about it, more people asking, then hopefully it gains momentum. Then there's the Asian Dramaturg's Network, which is trying really hard to bring that to the fore. The use of a dramaturg is not - I mean, in Germany, it's totally commonplace; they invented the word, so I suppose it has to be - but it's all over the place there, and in a lot of European countries - not in the UK; it's there, but it's not a massive thing; it should be more. Globally, it's not there enough. Singapore is small, which has its pluses and minuses in that, and I think courses like this, the workshops that are being held for everyone to come to - the more that we can keep talking about it - it's a really important one.

But I think that's what I was saying in terms of defining what we offer as a dramaturg, rather than just always tagging it and breaking it down - so lots of different people do it. It can only serve to - from my point of view, what it really does is enable the connection with our audiences to be enhanced. I think so much of the work that we do with artists is focused on the art, and we often forget that we are not making art for art's sake; we're making art to make an impact on someone, a group of people. It's not always the same group of people, which is a flaw, but it's specific groups of people that we're trying to make an impact with, and that bridge and that connection that a dramaturg can offer to help and support that creative drive is really important. 

SK: Can I ask what's the question again?

Daryl: Oh, just thinking about what it feels like to face the challenge of not necessarily accepting, or thinking about the necessity of a dramaturg, or do you feel like the culture exists, and whether it will change, or - yeah.

SK: I think that Singapore's culture, as a whole, doesn't sit very well for dramaturgy at the moment. That's the problem, because I think dramaturgy - the things that it needs, like experimentation, time, play, are not things that are inbuilt into a lot of our current, existing processes and systems, and people tend to see it as wasteful or indulgent, and I think that it's our whole cultural mindset that needs to change. 

But it's also a practical thing - it's not just about the cultural thing, it's also that, in terms of money, in terms of ethics, and wages, things like this - they are also not in place, right? I mean, don't even talk about dramaturgs, like, considered a role that's extra. Talk about existing roles already - the wages and stuff for that is also not - so if things are already not there, in terms of what exists, why are they willing to - why are people going to be willing to create another one when there's already not enough existing? So I think that's another of the reasons that structurally, we need to also rethink a lot of those things, before we can actually start to inbuild a dramaturg into the process as well.

I don't think people are resistant to the idea of it in terms of actually having it. I think most people'd be, like, oh, got dramaturg, sure, great! But if I have to pay for it, oh, maybe I don't need it, and maybe it's not important, or, okay lah, you can also do, right, actually, you can also think about this, right? You think about this also lah, then we don't need dramaturg already. A lot of people tend to do that. That's why it goes back down actually to that very first part, which is - do we value it, and how much money are we willing to put there? How much time are we willing to put there, as well? 

Another thing, though, is matching the dramaturg to the production is also something that is not happening. I guess that's why people think that - because people tend to only know a few dramaturgs, right now, in the industry, so their idea of a dramaturg gets tied to those few people. They think, oh, a dramaturg must be like this guy, must be like that guy - so a lot of people think that means, I'm not like that, so I'm not a dramaturg lah. Or they think, oh, but you only need this kind of person to be a dramaturg in the process. Actually, I don’t need this kind of person - that means my show don't need dramaturg. I think people just have their idea of a dramaturg fixed based on the people that they see doing dramaturg roles now - they they think that I don't need it, or I don't want it - but actually, maybe they do. But it's because their idea is set. 

I think the other thing is that the idea of the dramaturg needing to be quite established already is also something that is entrenched in Singapore's culture as well. I don't know whether it's a global thing, but I do think that there’s this sense that, oh, you have to be at this level already, then you can become dramaturg. I don't think a lot of people would want to hire fresh dramaturgs in Singapore because - firstly, it's an additional expense; secondly, I want to make sure my money is going to someone who's already established. I think a lot of people think like that, if I put it very bluntly. That's also why nobody's going to hire new dramaturgs in Singapore so far - it's because people expect that they have to be at this level already. That's my personal opinion, not necessarily true - I feel like in Singapore there's a sense you have to earn or prove that you can be a dramaturg before you can be a dramaturg. That's the feeling I'm getting right now from most people. 

That's also, maybe, why it's hard - but also why I feel like Centre 42 is great, because it's trying to nurture new ones and trying to match us to people who are new as well, and at least start to raise the culture - we actually need to have programmes that nurture new dramaturgs alongside new playwrights - maybe not just playwrights; it could be, also, people who are just creating - emerging practitioners creating performance. Because I think Centre 42 has done a great job doing that to raise awareness for dramaturgs with playwrights, but then people still then think of dramaturgy mostly with only text. It can't just be Centre 42 doing the work, because Centre 42 is text-based, right? That's the main focus - of course they're going to look at supporting that more. What we need is for other places, maybe places that do interdisciplinary stuff, to also think about bringing in dramaturgy. Then we can start to break dramaturgy away from just being only linked to text-based, yeah.

JC: Any other questions? Before we close, I'm going to just ask three of you - any last words; what would you like to say to the arts community?

SM: You are great!

Yanling: Is that the producer?

SM: I mean, I do think I will just - I think I do speak to that - one of the things is that we do live in a highly - our scene is very highly product-focused. That is a natural detraction from what would be the dramaturgical process. With Centre 42, I went to Czechia last December, and all the theatres there have in-house dramaturgs - everybody has it, and their job is to work with the artists to develop the piece that has been commissioned by this theatre. It's just built into the process, and they are employees of this theatre; they're not freelancers, their job is to be the dramaturgical eye for this theatre and the work that they do. But that can only happen because they plan very early - they are invested in this being a very quintessential part of the development of the work; that is always in the planning of how they do their seasons and things like that. Whereas, here, we're constantly turning over productions with ridiculous timelines, constantly, right? There isn't even space for doing a dramaturg's call - even if I had the budget, I cannot; it makes no sense, because there's no point having a dramaturg for a three-month script-to-production process, right? I think we really do need to rethink how that system works, and how we then factor ourselves in [unclear] with the dramaturg hat; factor ourselves into those processes from the onset. 

But I will say, on the flip side, what I do find is that, for someone like me, when you have long-term relationships with a particular artist, that they actually do come and consult with you right from the start, and they are like, oh, actually, I have this idea, what do you think about it, you know? And then automatically that part of my brain kicks on, and I can be like, oh, actually, I read this book by this person, I think it has some really good things that you might want to take a look at, so why don't you go read this book, this book, and this book, you know? So I feel like a lot of it also happens very organically, very ground up. But, again, it's not - this person, this artist, doesn't come to me being like, can you be the dramaturg, and I have this idea - it's like, can I just, I just want to talk to you about this. I feel like maybe it doesn't even need to be so nicely packaged as such either. But I do feel that there is some value into the individual saying, I'm doing dramaturgical work, and it involves this, and this is how I fit into the puzzle of this work.That has been a way, a different way or different lens, of looking at making work. 

SK: I do feel like dramaturgy is an exciting space, and I hope more people can be excited to take it on. I do agree with Shridar, though, it's actually about developing long-term relationships as well - generosity begets generosity, so if you are generous, as a person, to a dramaturg, people will also start to approach you to be a dramaturg. But then, also find your own boundaries and capacity. I feel like you have to care about the artist's work, or you have to care about - like, why would you suddenly say, oh, I saw this thing and thought of you? It's because you actually care about the artist's work, right? So if you want to develop a relationship with an artist, you need to actually care - it cannot be so calculated, like, I'm only going to care about you from this point of time to this point of time, for a production.

But the tricky thing is we also need to earn money and make money. I don't know how to fix that part. But I do think that the core of it is that you need to really start to have genuine care, and want to develop that relationship. Just as artists have their own voice, I think dramaturgs also have their own areas that they care about. It's finding out what area you care about, and who are the artists you're interested to work with. I still remember [Lim] How Ngean - he actually developed a relationship with Pichet Klunchun just like that - they became very close because he actually cared, and it's through caring about that person, and being interested in what they are - you form a relationship, and that's how it grows, and then you start wanting to work together. He didn't just go straight in and say, you know, I'm only looking at you as a person who has potential to just be my employer. You know what I mean? It's because he actually was interested in what he was doing as well, you know? I think that is something that cannot be forced. You have to want to be a dramaturg just as much as you want people to want a dramaturg around. 

I remember [Kok] Heng Leun also said something like - actually, it's deep hanging out. It's just like deep hanging out, basically. Dramaturgy is basically just deeply hanging out with another person, sincerely. So you have to be sincere in it - if you're not sincere, I think the artist will also know.

SB: I think we can probably all keep you here for another three hours talking about the joys and the value of dramaturgy. I remember in one of the first discussions we had, saying - everyone talks about the value of dramaturgy, but it’s the first thing to get cut, which is just crazy, because if there's value to it, why are we cutting it? We've talked a lot about dramaturgy, I think, in terms of the space that we're in, and the environment which we're in - which I don't think is just Singapore. I think it feels very - because Singapore's a small place, and everyone knows what's going on and who's doing what, it feels like - oh gosh. But I think across the world at the moment, making art is really, really hard. People are under pressure for time and money wherever one is making their art, which inevitably puts pressures. 

I think there are two things that we don't often talk about, and I think perhaps the dramaturg gives one the space to talk about these things... one is embracing failure. We're so programmed to have a success - the anxiety that comes with that. I think that the safe space that a dramaturg can offer to embrace failure and develop work is really, really important. I didn't put it in the slides, but there's many, many things that people talk about being a dramaturg, and one of the things that I read recently was: how would you describe a dramaturg? And they said, I call it a condom. I was like, what? Because it makes me feel safe! Okay... But, you know, I think that embracing failure - you can only do that if you feel safe to do it. And it's failure from - and we've talked about this, reflections, the learnings that we have, where we failed, and then we learned from that. I think if we can inject that into everything that we're looking at - it is always going to be hard, in terms of the restrictions on time and money and space. 

There's another question which comes along with that, which often never gets asked in the worlds that we work in, is: what is enough? We always talk about wanting something, and I think it's also important to say: but actually, when will that be enough? When will we feel that we've got to a point which we then can give ourselves time to walk away from the art as well? I think that's another interesting question that, again, with the guide of a dramaturg, you could have - yeah, I think failure, and what is enough, to shift mindsets, is something else. But I think there's lots of to unpack. Thank you for listening tonight. 

SM: Thank you.