Dramaturgy Central Spring 2006

Production dramaturgy: Lecturer Carrie O'Dell shares her production experience researching Yiddish theatre

In May of 2005, I was lucky enough to land a position as dramaturg for a production of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk directed by Elizabeth Swados. We met for the first time in her huge SoHo loft, her big brown poodles sniffing my bag as though I had smuggled my cats in to play. We talked about the play and what appealed to each of us about it. Our responses were similar: forbidden love, trapped spirits, possession, religious ecstasy. I was thrilled when she told me that she was more interested in novels and poetry and film related to the play than in extensive accounts of past productions. I love working like this, getting myself into the mindset of a text and to determine how I want to confront it before plunging into research on what everyone else thought of it.

My responsibility as Dybbuk dramaturg was to keep Liz swimming, nay drowning, in material. Each time we met, I brought more novels, journal articles, translations, and tapes of possession rituals or classic horror films. This was as much preparation for me as it was for her; when she asked me to start work on the performance text in September, I had and arsenal of words and images to sift through. Liz trusted me from the get-go, and that fueled my need to tie everything I read or saw to The Dybbuk. I had a dybbuk nightmare that I hoped to have again so I could maybe remember it, even though the first dream was so terrifying I woke up in a cold sweat and had to check under the bed before I turned off the light.

The evidence of my research lies in my protocol and performance text, the assembling of copies of the material I gave Liz, the notes in the Bibliography, the details I looked up for the cast. While the research was an integral part of my work on The Dybbuk far, it didn’t explain the nightmares or the need to spend three hours in the Judaica section at Strand, looking at books unrelated to the play. That is far more interesting than the fact that I actually closed the Lincoln Center Library twice last fall.

The rehearsal process added a whole new layer to my dramaturgy. Liz is a highly collaborative artist, and each member of the cast contributed new and exciting material

It occurred to me that I might have my own dybbuk, something that made me want to test boundaries just to see what would happen. Liz once told me, “Good writing or composing is like acting; you have to totally believe it to do it.” Good dramaturgy also falls into that category. You can do all of the research you like and present impeccable protocols, but unless you believe, you cannot truly be part of the director’s vision.