Article by Theatre Professor Highlights Student Dramaturgs

The online theatre journal, HowlRound, has recently published an article by Assistant Professor of Theatre Jeanmarie Higgins that describes the work that dramaturgy students do in the Department of Theatre at UNC Charlotte. “The Youngest People in the Room: Dramaturgy in Undergraduate Theatre Programs” presents the challeges and opportunities that undergraduate theatre students encounter as they learn what it means to be a dramaturg.

Approximately 20 dramaturgy students participate each semester in a dramaturgy team for Department of Theatre productions, conducting research, attending rehearsals, interviewing cast members, writing blogs, leading talk-backs after performances, etc. They are trained and guided by Higgins, whose own dramaturgy projects include the reconstruction, with Associate Professor of Dance Kim Jones, of Martha Graham’s 1938 solo, Imperial Gesture. That work is the subject of “Iconicity and the Archive,” an essay in the current issue of Review: Journal of Dramaturgy.