Mapping the Terrain (Part 1) | ADN Symposium 2016

HN: I’d like to invite all of you to our first session called 'Mapping the Terrain'. Some of you have been communicated through emails about what this session is about. I’ll be the first to say I am not sure what this session is about - I have a few ideas; basically, it is to just talk among ourselves about this creature, or these two creatures - the dramaturg, and dramaturgy. We had - I had, in the early stage, an idea of how we could gather these people from Asia, and they’ll be talking about each country’s practice, and then I realised maybe that might not be the best way to go. I’m so sorry if some of you have prepared that, and I’ll say now that it is not going to waste for the simple reason – we do want that kind of intelligence and information and data. So you can still pass it to me or some of us, when we’re collating. Many of the invited speakers have also been given quite a lengthy detailed questionnaire. These questionnaires had quite, well, in-depth look at dramaturgy and the dramaturg, and we collated them. Now based on some of the responses that we got, we’re now switching things up for this particular session. The first half an hour, Robin and I will try to lead, moderate, initiate a kind of an open discussion where we will go into literally ‘what is this animal dramaturg and dramaturgy?’, where we will be talking about certain kinds of responses that we got from your questionnaire. After half an hour, we’re going to do breakout sessions or groups. I will give further instructions, but just to keep in mind that, to keep it really just flowing in terms of discussion and exchange of ideas. Yeah? So, I think if there’s nothing else, I’ll like to really just go straight into the next session because we do have quite a bit of things to do. 

For the first, for the next half an hour, what we’d like to do is tackle some of the responses that we got from your questionnaire pertaining to the ideas of dramaturgy, dramaturg, and the dramaturg in relation to maybe some of the definitions, understandings, that are culturally or socioculturally specific to the region. I will probably now be talking a little bit and then I probably would ask other people to talk also, about their views in relation to their responses. So, as many as there are different definitions of dramaturgy and dramaturg, one of the things is that we cannot, uh, sort of... avoid language. There’s a lot of translation and transliteration in the work of dramaturgy and also about dramaturgy. The term itself has been used or repurposed or reconfigured to different sociocultural and sociolinguistic ways. So it was quite interesting for us to just read some of your responses about how you think of dramaturgy in terms of your specific cultural and sociocultural location. Would you [to RL] like to take over at the moment or do you... we’re going to keep this quite... organic.

RL: I will just sit down and keep this quite informal. I was most struck by, I think, by Yinan’s response that in translation, in Mandarin – I’m effectively bilingual so I speak, read and write Chinese – there isn’t a term that encompasses... I think one of the problems – one of the issues with Mandarin and in translation is that we can use the language onomatopoetically, which means we can do a trans homophone translation of it, in a way that Japanese can, in terms of using the katakana to kind of like do a Japanese script version of the word ‘dramaturg’. Now in Mandarin, there isn’t. At the level of translation, and there are a few that have been suggested, they always operate on the level of ‘consultant’, right? So they are either a 策劃編創 [cehua bianchuang] or... which are on a consultancy level that really doesn’t, in my view, encompass what a dramaturg actually does. So I’m literally going to pass the mic over to Yinan to talk a little bit about this and how that can colour perception. Because if it’s a consultant, then, I mean, that’s not a wrong definition of a dramaturg, but how do we, and I would like to hear from different cultures, do you have a terminology for it? Or do you merely adopt the English or the Anglicised word for it? So, Yinan?

YN: Thanks. I just talked with the colleagues from Hong Kong and got to know my translation of dramaturgy is being used in Hong Kong and people do not know it’s my translation [laughs]. Actually it’s a direct translation of ‘dramaturgy’ – drama as 戲劇 [xiju] is a fixed translation for that, and 構作 [gouzuo]. 構 [gou] is kind of... “-turgy” [laughter from those present]. “-turgy” if we go back to the original meaning, it’s kind of a “construct” or “to do” pieces. So that’s where the Chinese translation character comes from. 構 [gou] is kind of “structure” and “make structure of”, and 作 [zuo] is “to do”. So, basically, I find this direct translation perhaps is the best way to translate it. And before that, as you mentioned, “consultant” 人學顧問 [renxue guwen] or “literary manager” or “literary consultant”, it tries to conclude, to close the door to the dramaturgs. To close the door and the “consultant” is not part of the creation team and that’s basically the major difference that I want to develop a new translation. It’s not outside. It spills outside and inside. And this “inside”, this being part of a team, has to be depicted in the translation I guess.

RL: How well has this – now that you’ve found out that your Hong Kong colleagues have adopted it, so the concept of a 構作 [gou zuo], which I think is new – it’s a questionnaire that I’ve actually read it – how well has it gone down? Have other companies been, do they recognise, is there a need to put a legend and explain it to practitioners in your area and in your country? 

YN: Actually it’s quite interesting because in China, almost all the people I met in our academy – it started first in the BA programme in dramaturgy in Beijing, at the Central Academy – all of my colleagues are against this translation. Because it’s hard to ‘concruit’ [recruit] people, ‘concruit’ [recruit] students, and people do not know what 戲劇構作 [xiju gouzuo] is, it’s quite strange. So they prefer to call my programme as 戲劇策劃 [xiju cehua] - it’s also a consultant, or to make it happen, that kind of thing. But in Shanghai, and in Guangzhou, and in other cities, and in Hong Kong – people use this term. And I think it’s being used outside, but not in Beijing, not in my academy. So it’s quite strange. But I heard some independent groups begin to use this term, and also in Hong Kong I just heard from a colleague that it’s become a quite general translation of dramaturgy. So it’s also shocking for me, I did not know that. 

HN: I just want to ask, probe a bit more, when we were talking about specific terminology and how it’s being used, so that’s on a linguistic level, but in terms of the practice of it, especially where you come from, especially with Yinan – you’re straddling China and Germany – how do these words then impact the way dramaturgs work. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, especially your work, which is theatre mostly right? Performance? 

YN: Yeah. Before I coined this term, there were dramaturgs in China. But they’re part of the system. Because China, the Chinese government, used to use theatre as a propaganda organ. So there were dramaturgs, people who function as dramaturgs in the troupes, in the major big theatre troupes. And they’re taking on the leading of role of the whole company, they are company leaders, or they’re the major writers, playwrights of the group, or they’re directors — 

HN: Almost like an impresario, would you say? Like an impresario? 

YN: It’s, uh, quite like East Germany’s system, the GDR’s system. They just get this pedagogy goal or task from the state and they should lead a whole group to study theories, for example the famous director Huang Zuolin [黄作霖] he’s also a dramaturg, and he, yeah, he introduced the Brechtian theory to China and organised the whole group to study Brecht together. So in some way, he functioned as a dramaturg. But it’s the first-generation of Chinese dramaturgs and they’re very closely linked with this kind of system, like East Germany. And after I coined this term, and the term is used by independent groups, and independent groups are outside from this whole state system, and of course their way of doing dramaturgy work is also changed. 

HN: When you say the first generation – I’m just obsessed with numbers – we’re talking about the time period so this is... when was this, when you say first generation of dramaturgs? 

YN: I guess it’s after 1949? Until the 1980s. 

HN: Thank you. Before we move on, do we have any responses or questions from the panel here first?  Anything that you’d like to add? Observations? 

RL: Or any kind of similar conflicts in terms of terminology where you come from? It’d be good to share how well known the concept is. Would you coin a different term for it? Now would be actually a good time to bring these issues up. In terms of just really defining the field. 

HN: Which is not to be confused with maybe some of the other panels where we’re looking at all these – what I term loosely as practical realities of dramaturging and dramaturgy. We’re looking at specific sociocultural and cultural contexts here. If there are no comments, actually I would like to ask Ken to speak a little bit, following that, on the way that dramaturgy is being used when you talked about the transliteration of the word itself and how does that then work, because you wrote something in the questionnaire that is very much aligned with the “quasi sociological” aspects of this, which is closely aligned with then, I guess, Goffman, right? Ken? 

KT: First of all, I have a kind of a disclaimer. The first question in this questionnaire was whether you were trained, “properly trained” as a dramaturg – and I shamelessly said “NO” [laughter from those present]. So my statement is actually from my very, you know, personal perspective, and also my background as probably a scholar trained in the discipline of sociology. So I responded to this particular question, the first time I encountered the word ‘doramatsurugī’ドラマツルギーin katakana transliteration of “dramaturgy” in Japan in 1990s, when I studied at the university as an international relations student, it didn’t have any connection to the theatrical practices. It was just, you know, it just meant a kind of a construction of a kind of dramatic dynamics in particular phenomenons in society. It was really kind of a bad word during that period. Everywhere I saw the ‘dramaturgy’ in sociological or “quasi sociological” papers. And then I started to work as a ‘dramaturg’ in English in Singapore, actually I came back to the question – whether this transliteration really worked to articulate something. It was quite interesting to compare this with Yinan’s discussion just now, because if you translate into the Chinese characters, Chinese characters have their own meanings. So even we Japanese have kanji characters, so I can really sense the meaning of that. So the character and the meaning is really correlated, whereas this katakana transliteration doesn’t say anything, doesn’t mean anything by itself. It’s a sound. Which means that this transliteration opens the – it’s quite open for your interpretation. So you can interpret it as anything. And if this is totally – if this concept is totally alien to you, you can create your own interpretation. So what I observed was that this word ‘dramaturgy’ was quite conveniently interpreted in many different contexts, and at the end of the day, in that particular society, the meaning of this word ‘doramatsurugī’ was somehow different from ‘dramaturgy’ in English. By using this transliteration we created a different version of the term ‘doramatsurugī’, and so probably Japanese ‘doramatsurugī’ and the English ‘dramaturgy’ should be something, somehow different. But the problem here is, because of the proximity of the sound, it is even more confusing. Because when you hear the word ‘doramatsurugī’ in Japanese, you almost automatically expect this means what ‘dramaturgy’ means in English. But actually it may not. And I believe it is not. So for me, my position is a bit ambiguous because I am Japanese, but I live in Singapore, I’m practising in Singapore. So I am trapped somewhere in-between these two, English and Japanese, but for me, this transliteration of ‘doramatsurugī’ and probably ‘dramaturg’ itself in Japanese is somehow quite confusing. Because of this transliteration. 

HN: Following on that, Ken, if it’s quite confusing, then how do you – as I’ve said before already, the work is always very different from when we get down to the brass tacks of actually looking at the word. In terms of practice, is there still a struggle with the words ‘doramatsurugī’ and ‘dramaturgy’ for you? 

KT: Yes and no. Because at this moment, I’m working – as a dramaturg I’m working only in English. So this doesn’t make a big conflict at this moment. But a few days ago, I had quite an interesting experience. Actually I was working with Alvin Tan [Artistic Director of The Necessary Stage, Singapore], sitting there [gestures] on a project and we were talking about collaborations. And we found that in the discussion, so we discussed why we collaborate, why we need to do this in a collaboration – and we realised in this discussion, what Japanese groups of people mean by ‘koraborēshon’, in katakana transliteration, was quite different from what we meant by ‘collaboration’ in English. And their way of understanding ‘koraborēshon’ was very specific, very [inaudible, sounds like ‘now’] way of understanding, and probably this is because of how the word was introduced to Japan in a very specific context. So again, this transliteration, the confusion came in. And we had to spend quite a bit of time to fill in the gap, the perception gap. So probably because of the proximity, we just take it for granted too much that we are meaning the same thing. But actually it was really not. So it was quite interesting, a striking experience for me.

HN: Thank you, Ken. Shintaro-san and Nanako-san, I’d like to hear about some of your responses to what has been said, your experiences especially. I know that the terminology rabbithole is dangerous to go really deep down into, but could you just share with us some of your experiences when you are dispensing the word ‘dramaturgy’ and ‘dramaturgy’ especially in your fields of work. Compared to Ken, who has worked for now, predominantly in Singapore as a dramaturg, there is Nanako who has worked in Japan and Germany, right? In both areas. And then of course Shintaro who teaches the concept of dramaturgy in his university. Could we hear from either of you or the two of you? 

NN: Yes, thank you. Maybe I have less things about ‘doramatsurugī’ in Japanese because probably when I was used to, when I get used to that term in Japanese, ‘doramatsurugī’, was when I was studying theatre studies in Japan. And that was almost like 10, 15 years ago. And then at the time, there is no person who is doing ‘dramaturgy’ in the theatre project or in dance project in Japanese context. So I think that ‘doramatsurugī’ is always about the theories of Noh theatre. So it’s not about active, how do you say, performative actions of dramaturgs, embodied dramaturgies of things. After I moved to the US, I was in New York, and then I found out more about dance dramaturgs working in independent dance theatres, independent dance projects, and then I realised that this term, ‘dramaturgy’, is also about the action, also about the dramaturgs’ role in the theatre project. So it’s more of a lively term. But at the time, I was not really speaking in Japanese, I was using the term ‘dramaturgy’ in English. So it’s kind of twisted in a way? And then now I am back, kind of back between Germany and Japan, and then ‘doramatsurugī’ is now kind of the ‘fashion’ term in Japanese theatre context. I’m also working as a dramaturg, so somehow these kinds of realities, or the varieties of meaning, comes back to the original term that I learnt in Theatre Studies. 

SF: I came across the word ‘dramaturgy’ also in Theatre Studies when I was a student, so it’s more or less about 20-25 years ago. And then I still think the word ‘dramaturgy’ for many Japanese refers to how you compose a piece of theatre in a written text. We use more often the word ‘dramaturg’ – it is a very fashionable word now, there are so many more dramaturgs now. But do we really talk about ‘dramaturgy’? For me, at least, we still think of dramaturgy as something related to a written text, or a sociological metaphor, like Takiguchi-san said. And yet because Japanese are not very theoretical – me neither – we are not good at dealing with concepts, but I think we still need to explore more the various strange relations between the word ‘dramaturgy’ and ‘dramaturg’. Because the relationship between the two words are so complex, in reality. 

HN: Thank you. Yeah it is. Just before, I would like to just see if there are any other responses to this, especially to our other speakers who have experience working in Japan and Asia, such as David? 

DP: It’s a fascinating discussion. I’m thinking hard and fast about many of the things that have been said, and the space between ‘dramaturgy’ and ‘dramaturg’ is blurry. And I think it would be wise of us to look at that characteristic, that blurriness, as a positive, not as a negative, not as something that we should try and resolve and fix up, because actually I think in that way it’s much more responsive to the artistic process, to the process of creation. One thing I’d like to pick up on is something that Yinan said, and forgive me if I’ve misunderstood, but I wrote something down which looked, reads back to me as: “the idea of dramaturgy is making a structure for doing”. And it resonated with me, or perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part, but I’ve come to the idea of ‘dramaturgy’ and the role of the ‘dramaturgy’ through my practice as an artist, so as an artist who has worked with dramaturgs and then as an artist who has become a dramaturg on other people’s projects. And I worked a lot in new technologies as the whole idea of dramaturgy was developing. So I started to think of dramaturgy in this way, as making a structure for doing, but really in the way of what I call an operating system. So I think of dramaturgy as the operating system of the production, in which the system of operation is a series of logics and decisions that have been developed in the alchemy of artistic research and practice. And the dramaturg in relation to this operating system contributes but does not make the dramaturgy. So the dramaturg is a contributor to the creation of the dramaturgy, but one of many contributors. And in this way, the dramaturg then is multi-faceted. Their relationship to the artistic process as a matter of function is one which interfaces constantly in relation to the artistic process that the people are, that the artists are generating on the floor. And so in my mind there are two things that are going on. There’s the dramaturgy that is the operating system, and then there’s the dramaturg who contributes to the creation of the operating system, but is not responsible for the dramaturgy. 

HN: Thanks David. Peter, would you like to say anything? 

PE: Just to, I think, pick up a little bit on what David was saying but also to respond a little bit to the other comments, I’m reminded of the fact that the term is inherently unstable, I mean dramaturgy itself as a term is not an English word, it’s not a word that is necessarily clearly defined within the English language or the German language or any other language that adopts the term. And as we know it’s a term that comes from a conjunction of two terms from Classical Greek aesthetics, and according to classical scholars, the term itself is inherently unstable, people are not really sure what it means. And it brings together the concepts of drama and organisation of drama in its etymology. But beyond that we have a series of I think debates around its application, and many people I think have chosen to I guess dwell in the inherent ambiguity of the term and to use that productively as a way of thinking about a creative practice. It’s inherently paradoxical because it enables us to think structurally, and to think about the creative process in terms of a system or an operating system, but that process is no longer linear because we’re using an ambiguous concept, so we can then dwell in the full complexity of a creative process. 

HN: I think what we’re gathering here is definitely that the ambiguity is or would lead to productivity more than anything else, and creativity. I just want to quickly move in a different direction where, when we’re talking about terms for dramaturgy, to the idea of or the concept – so there was the thing, which was this concept of dramaturgy, to the person, the doer, the maker, the interface. Helly Minarti, from Indonesia, pointed out some interesting statements in her questionnaire where, when we talk about the dramaturg, from what I gathered, she was talking about how there is still no term that really equates to the full – whatever that means – the full idea of the dramaturg. But there were some interesting local or colloquialisms that have come up. The two that the first time I heard that I really, really liked the idea, was ‘pendamping’ in Bahasa Indonesia. ‘Pendamping’, which one way to look at it, to translate it, would be this person who literally is the companion or the person who sits side-by-side the performance-maker. What was more interesting was that lately, Helly and I think her colleagues have come up with a new word, or rather there seems to have been an evolution of that word from ‘pendamping’, which is side-by-side or companion, or even partner, it has become, or it is rather that they want to encourage the use of the word ‘pengganggu’, which is, for those of us who speak Malay, that’s an even more beautiful word because the idea behind ‘pengganggu’, the root word being ‘ganggu’, is to disturb, to interrupt, to rupture, even. To provoke, the provocateur. Maybe now I just want to quickly ask Helly to speak a little bit about this ‘pengganggu’ and why it was used because she did explain a bit of it and I’d like to hear from her, where it has very much to do with sociocultural systems of hierarchy, right? Helly? Can someone pass Helly the mic please?

HM: So I’m talking from a fairly specific context, of course. So it’s dance, and what we did in Jakarta Arts Council. And it has – and I’m tracing back further, to as early as 1979. Because, I mean, to put it fairly shortly, so Jakarta Arts Council is not like any other council probably in the world, because it’s more like – it’s run by artists, it’s a collective curatorial board consisting of artists and independent art workers, assigned and mandated to run a set of programmes across six art forms within three years. So every three years there’s a change, and one person can only hold two terms. Now the context is dance, because the context that I encounter in Indonesia now has progressed, no, maybe regressed [laughs] I digress, into academicization. So a certain formality or formal ideas, you can trace even in the words of choreographers, young choreographers. So we tried to break it with this Choreo Lab. The ‘pendamping’ is – I refer back to 1999, to two of my colleagues from theatre, it was 1999 when this Kelola Foundation in Indonesia, it’s probably the first, how do you say, foundation who offered open calls – it’s very clear if you want to access funding for productions. Because before that, you used your informal links and means to get access, and sometimes I wondered how artists could produce performances. So when young artists got a grant to produce a new work, the foundation will assign, first, the observer. So they will send someone who will write their observations about the process and the piece as part of a report, probably – a third eye. And then – I don’t know when – they tried, they went further by introducing this ‘pendamping’. So if you got, especially when they start this female choreographers project, selected. I knew that over the years they tried to introduce different models, because at first the artists resisted. Like, ‘why these people have to come, da da da’, so they modified, modified over the years. So this is the practice before we did this Choreo Lab. Being dance, before and after, there’s a sense of hierarchy in terms of, I don’t know, education and transmission. So when we did this Choreo Lab, I invited two, how do you say, informed – I would say, not really ‘trained’, but two artists, senior artists that I employed to accompany these three young choreographers, and they’re not from dance. Once is from movement... elusive [also could be ‘allusive’?] person as well, and then when we try to break this hierarchy, we set up more like informal workshop for four days in one place and discussions can go until midnight, because that informality is important, instead of classroom and blah blah blah. And then, it’s always like this, these three young choreographers were overwhelmed and always said, we need your guidance. And three of us just said no, we don’t want to guide you or whatever. We just want to ganggu. I think it is provoke, but in a playful way. That’s more – there’s a playfulness in that. We said no, we really want to hear you, this is your process, we’re just here to, you know, provoke you, but in a playful way. So as part of your artistic process. That’s how... and I think it’s very effective. Yeah. In the two years that we did the project. 

HN: It’s interesting that you... I sense that you found difficulty in trying to describe these three people and what they do, meaning that for me, it sounds as if, especially coming from the Southeast Asian cultural landscape, the way when you say you bring in people to even observe young artists, there’s already a sort of baggage, a sort of preconception, misconception of these ‘seniors’ coming in, right? To want to look at the work, assess and judge. I can imagine just talking to young artists, saying that these are people with experience, but that it’s not just about paying deference and surrendering, total respect, right? Which goes then in the direction of this thing about mentoring. I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Yair – I myself when dramaturging, I think a few of us have this... where we always draw lines and because it is such a vague, amorphous term and concept and practice from one project to another, I sometimes draw lines and boundaries for myself. So the question is always – when does the dramaturging... When is the dramaturging really dramaturging, and when is it mentoring? When we suddenly find ourselves as a more experienced dramaturg paired with a younger performance maker, and the younger performance maker turns to the dramaturg and goes, and you feel it especially in this region where the hierarchy is very strong, paternalism is very strong, where the younger artist turns and actually looks at the dramaturg and goes, ‘what should I do now?’ 

RL: Actually, I wanted to respond to Helly’s, um, because... as a theatre scholar, I know what dramaturgy is, and it’s part of what I studied. But what a dramaturg is, I never knew. I actually was invited, me and Heng Leun, in 2007 - and this was the first time we were told to assume this title of a dramaturg by the then-festival director of the Singapore Arts Festival, Goh Ching Lee. So she says, would you like to be a dramaturg for this platform? She had another platform called Forward Moves to introduce and expose and give a platform for new choreographers, and Fu Kuen, who was the person put in charge, was like the person-in-charge. Basically she wanted Heng Leun and myself to replicate that, and just said, then just used the word ‘dramaturg’. It was interesting because she never used the word ‘dramaturg’ to describe Fu Kuen. Yeah? She used the ‘dramaturg’ to describe me. Because obviously her association of dramaturgy is with theatre. And then basically what we were told to do was, we were told to, we had to do a lot of things. We had to frame what that edition was - so from Forward Moves it became Full Frontal, and we were supposed to give a platform to directors. So again we were mentors, we had to commission, we had to frame, we had to curate, and we had to literally, so, basically, we had to babysit these directors with whatever projects that they wanted to do, and be there ready to listen to them or as what Faith has described, if they have a meltdown, we were supposed to - and there were meltdowns. [laughter from everyone] and they didn’t know what to do, and the programme got too big, and we had to tell them and so on so forth. We were, at that time, the first edition, which involved Li Xie and Peter Sau, we acted more as advisors, because we really didn’t know what, we just thought, because as practising artists ourselves, we are very non-interventionist. We don’t like people intervening, so we certainly were not going to intervene. So that got a bit out of hand. Then the second edition involved Zizi Azah, who did something very specific. She did Rhinoceros. That was where, and also because Heng Leun had a lot of expertise on absurdism, so that was where it became a lot more dramaturgical - advising on what to do and so on and so forth. And by the time we came to the third edition, which involved Nelson Chia, he wanted to do something devised, and then it went into something - so we, too, learned, that way. Our involvement as dramaturgs became a lot more participatory, from advisor into the actual involvement in the making of it. I remember with Nelson’s edition, I was also asked to provide text. And then there was a lot of dramaturgy involved because he wanted to do something that he would normally not do. And the platform allowed it. Heng Leun, would you like to add on to that? 

HL: I mean, I’ve been listening to this and there are some things which I thought were really interesting as a dramaturg because I think you enter a different phase, and with different kinds of agreements on how it can be done. I think in some situations whereby you are involved right in the beginning, then I think the constructing of that structure becomes part of that process. But there are sometimes when you are working with a director or playwright who actually knows the structure very well, then what you really do, I feel my process would really be like testing the structure, rupturing it, or even trying to extend that structure and seeing how it actually can involve other things in order to capture new possibilities. Uh... there were three occasions that I thought were very interesting in doing all the dramaturgical work. The first time I did dramaturgy was really because it was Li XIe who was doing Vaginalogue. Initially I was her director, but I felt slightly uncomfortable because she was doing her own story of what the vagina would be like. So I decided then to move myself away from the name of the director. But to assist her in the process of actually, how to structure the thing, with her as the creator. So I’m always at the outside watching, but I’m also inside, which then the in and out becomes interesting because while you’re in, at the same time you’re out. And you have to be in and out at the same time. Because there’s the connection between the work and the audience, which is one aspect of a dramaturg, when you are actually going through the work. So that was the first time that I sort of realised that I’m not the role of the director, and that was in about 2000 or 1999. The second dramaturgical experience was different because it was with a very, very experienced director - Danny Yung from Zuni in Hong Kong. Danny Yung knows clearly what he has in mind. I mean, he’s an architect. So structure is something that he knows so well. So what was interesting was that most of the actors were from Singapore and some young people from Hong Kong, I think they didn’t quite understand how he worked. So I had to then try to enter into the world of Danny Yung and how he constructs and try to translate that to the actors and to the young students. But at the same time, there was something that I realised, because it was a long process. There were two workshops leading to it. And so my service to him was then in the end, as a dramaturg, was to dramaturg his structure, his way of working. And how his way of working can become a kind of structure, where he as a director can sort of formalise. So that then became a different approach. The third experience was actually intercultural. Because I was working with a group who were doing, who was trying to do a musical, 孟姜女 [Meng Jiang Nü], but they were going to do it in English. So it was a playwright from Singapore, but she doesn’t really read a lot of Mandarin, Jean Tay. Then the music director, the composer, the librettist, were actually all from, I think from the UK. So they were doing something that comes from China and - so there were actually a lot of things that we were working on in terms of just the script itself. So there were ideas that sort of didn’t feed into the play. And so I then became like a translator. But as well as an informant- so I’m providing information and actually doing cross-cultural and intercultural kind of work, trying to make them understand that their setup may work in that particular setup but it may not work as a story when you want to put it into those characters. So there were actually cultural nuances that you have to negotiate and try to work around. And so the whole process really became a huge intercultural discussion. From many aspects, from the way the music is being used as a kind of musical, the lyrics, the metaphors, even the dramatic actions that happen on stage. Yeah. 

HN: Thanks Heng Leun. If there are any pressing last minute comments? We’re actually going to wrap up this particular section and go into the next one. Which allows time to continue this discussion, yeah? So the next session is a bit more dynamic. If you, you’ll probably notice that there were handouts given to you, we’re going back to school, tutorials. What I’ve suggested here is that we do breakout groups of discussions, yeah? And what’s going to happen is that in these breakout groups, I think we have allotted about 35-40 minutes of discussion. There are also names of the people who are to be in the groups. For specific reasons, we would like to mix it up again. Some of you are in panels with other people and some people you do not see or engage with some of the other fellow panelists from other sessions. So what’s going to happen now is it’s going to be messy, chaotic, which we all love as dramaturgs to a certain extent. And then we’ll find the order and structure again. In this breakout group, what I’d like to do is also to invite the speakers and participants of other sessions to join, meaning I can see now Alvin, Charlene, people who were not supposed to be on this one, to just forget it and come into it. 

So there are three groups that we’ve sort of suggested. If you look at your handout, the first group I just called it roughly under the umbrella of “Praxis”, and then in group two there’s the general subject of “Conventions and Change”, and in the third group there is “Pedagogy and Transmission”. How this is going to work is that I have sort of picked out some statements again, provocations if you like, from the questionnaires, and then there are discussion points that you could take up among your group, you decide. I think most of the groups have up to two statements or provocations, you do not have to talk about both or discuss both, you can even say, we don’t want to do this, we want to actually continue with what we were talking about now, as in, the ideas and definitions of dramaturgy and the dramaturg, but I’m hoping that we can open it up further to different areas, which is why these specific subjects were chosen with their provocation statements yeah? What’s going to happen is the group will discuss for about 35 minutes, in that 35 minutes, I leave it up to you guys to take your coffee, tea, loo break, so it’s free and easy. But in that discussion, what I’d like you to keep in mind is to nominate one person, a representative of sorts, who would then give us a summary of your discussion and your kinds of threads of ideas that have come out of this discussion. The presentation or the speaking or the summarizing of this discussion is about 15 minutes. And then we have just a very short ten minutes for maybe extra comments and Q&A from other groups. So three groups, 35-40 minutes discussion, including your break time, and then each group will present for about 15 minutes, followed by Q&A, and then group two, group three. So very quickly I just want to run through, and I’ve left out anybody’s name, apologies, just come forward, yeah? It’s going to be messy, so for the observers I know that the first, the previous format was set up where we could listen. I would say to them, just drag your chair and join whichever group you want to lah, and then we’ll take it from there. For the discussants, group one I have assigned, which is Praxis, I have assigned: Peter Eckersall, Robin Loon, Yinan, Yair, Ruhanie and Ken. So get yourselves together. For the second group, Conventions and Change, there’s: How Ngean, David, Charlene, Shankar, Alyson and Alvin. For the third group, which is Pedagogy and Transmission, there’s: Shintaro-san, Giselle, Nanako, Helly and Heng Leun. Bilqis, because what you’re doing, it’s up to you whether you want to float freely or, whatever, yeah? So, can we get moving and get some blood flowing? So I’ll keep time, yeah? Thanks!