Abstract

Several years ago, at a conference on ensemble theatre, one participant proposed a workshop on physical dramaturgy to complement text-based approaches to creating and critiquing theatre. For many ensembles, “writing” a piece is actually the physical process of embodying the shapes, gestures, movements, and tableaux that suggest the thread or theme of the work being explored. Devising work in this way redefines what we mean by dramaturgy. In a world in which not all theatre is text based, the body’s “mind” may direct us. Physical impulse, rather than thought, may be the “writer.”