The Dramaturg’s Gaze: About the role of the dramaturg in contemporary theatre and dance practice

Abstract

This article proposes the positioning of the figure of the dramaturg within post-dramatic theatrical practice. It questions, on one hand, the ways in which the dramaturg’s agency influences artistic creation, while taking into account the possible controversies around his status as an intellectual, his ideological preferences and his subjectivity, and on the other hand, the potential which nests precisely in the philosophical capacity of this figure to problematise and analyse from the inside, even of his own gaze, the very idiom which connects the parties of the creative totality. In order to approach this very sophisticated and multi-layered theatrical presence, this article will address, among other, Saint-Exupéry’s drawings from his classic The Little Prince, Rafael Spregelburd’s visual experiments and Vincent Dunoyer’s dance of absence.