What Does a Dramaturg Do? A Guide for Actors

First rehearsal. You’ve introduced yourself, the designers have shown the model box, and then someone you haven’t met stands up with a stack of handouts and starts talking about the year the play is set in, what people ate, and what a word on page twelve meant to the first audience. The director calls them “our dramaturg.” You nod, write it down, and wonder what exactly they’re for.

It’s a fair question. Even people in theater find the job hard to pin down, partly because it changes from one production to the next. But for an actor, a dramaturg can be the most useful person in the building you never think to ask.

The short version: a dramaturg is the production’s expert on the play itself, its history, its world, and its words. They research, they answer questions, and they watch rehearsals as a stand-in for the audience. Use them early, come with specific questions, and bring what they give you into your choices, not just your notebook.

What a dramaturg is

Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), a membership organization for the field, describes the work in two phrases worth remembering. Dramaturgs, it says on its page explaining dramaturgy, “contextualize the world of a play” and “establish connections among the text, actors, and audience.” Everything else in the job grows out of those two ideas.

The role is older than it sounds. In 1767 the Hamburg National Theatre hired the German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as its critic of plays and acting, and the essays he wrote there, published as Hamburg Dramaturgy, made the word stick. That history is summarized in Wikipedia’s article on the dramaturge.

Broadly, there are two kinds of work. Production dramaturgy supports one show: research, context, and an outside eye in rehearsal. New-play dramaturgy helps a writer develop a script, and at some theaters a literary manager or dramaturg also reads and evaluates the new plays that come in. Some productions, especially small ones, have no dramaturg at all.

What they do before you arrive

Much of a production dramaturg’s work happens before the cast is in the room. According to Appalachian State University’s theatre department, in its production team handbook, the dramaturg reads the script many times, meets the director while the concept takes shape, provides research such as the text’s history and the playwright’s life, and attends design and production meetings.

Berklee’s career guide makes the same point from the other side: it describes dramaturgs as a behind-the-scenes resource for directors, actors, and playwrights, who spend much of their time researching on their own. LMDA’s list of production work includes locating drafts and versions of the text, which matters on a classic. On a new play, it can mean working with the writer.

Some theaters gather the results into a workbook or packet for the company. Wikipedia notes that in theater companies a dramaturg may create a workbook for the director and actors. Others hand out a glossary of unfamiliar terms or a pronunciation guide, both of which App State lists among the dramaturg’s rehearsal materials.

What they do in the rehearsal room

During rehearsals, a dramaturg may give the company a talk about the research: the period, the place, the politics, the first production. App State lists this, along with handing out resource material. Treat it as part of your homework, not a lecture to sit through.

After that, a lot of the job is watching. The same department describes the dramaturg as a stand-in audience member, noting how choices might “read” and where the concept could be clearer, and as a critical eye for the director and designers. Dramaturg Janine Sobeck, writing in the Utah Theatre Arts Journal, describes herself in rehearsal as another set of eyes for the director, making sure the production keeps to both the director’s and the playwright’s intent.

Notice the difference between research and notes. Research, as both Sobeck and Berklee describe, is meant to reach the cast, so ask for it freely. Observations about how the show reads are different: those generally go to the director, who decides what to pass on, so that one voice gives you notes.

How actors can use a dramaturg

Sobeck gives a lovely example of why this matters. Her designer for Oklahoma! probably doesn’t need to know how to get a bronco to buck, she points out. The actor playing Curly does. Research is only useful once it reaches the person who can use it on stage, and that’s your job as much as theirs.

So go to them with questions that change what you do. Here are the kinds that pay off:

• Words you can’t define precisely. Not just obscure ones. Ordinary words can mean something different, or sharper, than they do now.
• References your character makes. A name, a place, a song, a news event. You can’t play a reference you don’t understand.
• Social rules of the world. Who stands when someone enters? Who may speak first? What would be shocking to say?
• The cost of your character’s choices. What would it actually mean, in that time and place, to leave a marriage, refuse an order, or lose your job?
• Changes in the text. On a classic, ask whether a line was cut or altered and what it said before. On a new play, ask what the writer was after in a scene that keeps changing.

Bring the answers into your given circumstances, the facts of the world your character lives in. Our guide to given circumstances shows how to sort what the script states from what you’ve chosen, and dramaturgy feeds the first column.

A worked example: the first line of Romeo and Juliet

Here’s how the play opens, in the public-domain text from Standard Ebooks on our Romeo and Juliet page. Two Capulet servants are walking through Verona:

SAMPSON: Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals.

GREGORY: No, for then we should be colliers.

SAMPSON: I mean, an we be in choler, we’ll draw.

GREGORY: Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o’ the collar.

Read cold, it’s nonsense about coal. A dramaturg’s glossary would tell you that “carry coals” meant to put up with insults; K. Deighton’s 1903 edition, quoted on Shakespeare Online’s glossary, notes that coal carriers were among the lowest of servants. Now Sampson’s first line is a boast: we won’t be pushed around. The two trade a chain of sound-alike words: Gregory’s colliers, Sampson’s choler (anger), Gregory’s collar.

That changes how you play it. These aren’t two men chatting. They’re showing off, swapping puns to wind each other up before a fight. The glossary is what unlocks it, and once you have it, the jokes become actions you can play. For more on lines like these, see our guide to memorizing Shakespeare.

Turn the research into rehearsal

The danger with good research is that it stays on paper. The fix is to take it straight into the lines out loud. Once you know what “carry coals” means, say the exchange with that meaning, then say it again making Gregory’s reply land as a jab. You’ll remember the words faster, too, because they finally mean something.

When the dramaturg isn’t around at 11 at night, Offbook’s script-aware assistant, Genie, lets you highlight a word or line and ask about scene context or line interpretation. And in Offbook, realistic voices read every other character and wait for your line, so you can run the exchange with your new understanding until it sticks.

Keep a short page of your own notes from the dramaturg’s talk and packet, with just the facts that affect your scenes. If you’d like to practice on a public-domain play first, browse our library of plays, or turn a tricky speech into first-letter cues with the free line memorizer.

What a dramaturg doesn’t do

• Direct you. The director gives acting notes. A dramaturg informs the work; they don’t stage it.
• Rewrite the play. On a new play, they can ask questions and offer responses, but the writer writes. On a classic, the director decides the cuts, though the dramaturg may advise.
• Tell you the “right” reading. Good dramaturgs open possibilities. If you ask “what does this line mean?”, you may get three answers and a question back.
• Exist on every show. Plenty of productions, especially small ones, have none. Then the research is yours, and the questions above are your list.

Questions actors ask

Is it dramaturg or dramaturge?

Both spellings are used for the same job. Wikipedia uses “dramaturge”, and LMDA uses “dramaturg”. Use whichever your company uses on its program.

Is it OK to ask the dramaturg questions directly?

Usually, yes. Answering questions is part of the job. Check the company’s custom at the start: some directors prefer questions to go through them, especially during rehearsal. Breaks and before or after rehearsal are good times.

What’s the difference between a dramaturg and a director?

The director leads the production and makes the artistic decisions, including the notes you get. The dramaturg supports those decisions with research, context, and an outside view of how the work reads. They work closely together, but only one of them directs.

What if my production doesn’t have a dramaturg?

Be your own. Read about the period and the playwright, look up every word and reference you can’t define, and note the social rules of the world. Share anything useful with the director rather than with the cast, so it doesn’t turn into a second set of notes.