Striking words
Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash
‘A dramaturg is a dedicated person on the creative team whose primary task is to support the play's development. This is done by asking key questions, starting conversations, researching, providing context, and helping the writer tell their intended story.’
The writer, Tracy Ryan, had been working on her play, STRIKE! for a while, before it landed on the desk of Ardent Theatre Company. After my initial read, I was a mix of emotions, excited by its potential but terrified of its size! Ardent is a small company, with a handful of projects to our name, and so a project such as this with potentially more cast members than ‘The Lion King,’ couldn’t help but make me nervous at the prospect of me liking the script enough to think that we might take this project seriously! I read the play a few times, possibly in the hope that the more I read it, the more I’d realise it was an impossible task. Unfortunately, the more I read it, the more I fell in love with the story at the very heart of the play. It was full of fantastic characters, all drawn from the real-life events. It was a classic ‘David & Goliath’ premise, and despite its size, Mark Sands, and I, decided to dedicate some time and some resources to support the development of Tracy’s play.
My role in terms of supporting Tracy, was that of Dramaturg, a role that isn’t easy to define, but for me, and for this process, a role that required me to read various drafts, ask questions, start conversations, and support Tracy as best I could to make sure she was always telling her intended story. It was a collaborative effort on both our parts - collaboration is key to a project’s development, and collaboration requires excellent communication, a certain level of trust and transparency always. As human beings, at times, we find it difficult to work with other people, especially, when there appears to be no level ground on which to work. At some point along the collaborative path there will be disagreements, and there will be compromise and there will be moments when difficult situations will need to be handled delicately. For my role to really work, it was essential that Tracy and I trusted each other enough to be able to open the play up, see its very heart and find a way to piece it back together again, in a way that was fresh, original, and theatrical.
The most difficult transition in terms of play development was trying to create a piece of work that wasn’t simply a retelling of the facts. This play had the potential to be very theatrical in form, full of rich characters, determination, and endeavour. There was a lot of material based on the real-life events, which meant that Tracy had a lot of facts from which to work on – plus the fact the people that the central characters are based are alive today and more than happy to talk! Sometimes it’s easy for a writer to get bogged down in the facts and as a result lose a little of their own voice and so it was a case of finding the moments that Tracy wanted to explore and find a language to express those moments theatrically. I believe we have achieved this.
The play, in its current form, feels exciting and full of surprises, which is down to Tracy’s ability to receive notes, digest those notes, and act on them in her own individual way. The result is a draft that I believe everyone is happy with, none more so than Ardent, who believed in it, in the first place!
CLICK HERE to read more about our production of STRIKE!