A Practical Dramaturgy for Actors through Theatrical Production Procedures

Abstract

Dramaturgy, as a creative and critical act dependent on the theoretical and practical knowledge of theater, consists of two parts with Greek roots: Drama (action) and Ourgia (work and operation). Ourgia literally means to practice, act, and in other words process a raw material. Eugenio Barba divides Dramaturgy in to three parts: Actor Dramaturgy, Director Dramaturgy and Audience Dramaturgy. The modality of the process of acting (character action, corporeal action, and phonetic action) as actor dramaturgy is collaged, divided and assembled and then the dynamic stage motions present in space and time are conducted by actor. Paul Castagno, in his recent theorem, expounds dramaturgy as ‘‘Individual creative contribution of the actor to the growth of a performance’’ and ‘‘actor`s ability to root what they have recounted into a structure of organic actions’’. This perception emanates from a mode that a play, without actor`s cooperation and taking part, would never take place. Through this combination to create the character, Geoffrey Proel attributes the dramaturgical responsibility to the actor and asks them to participate in the creation of the content performance and transfer their lived and personal experience into the organic dramatic structures of the performance. The major problem of this paper is to expound and elucidate the relation between dramaturgy and actor, based on modality of production, exchange and combination of two internal structure (organic force) and external structure (dynamic force) in post-modern performance in theatre. Patrice Pavis, in 2000, predicted the need for an actor-dramaturge to complete playwriting in the 21st century. In order to complete the present study of Patrice Pavis’ recent theory in the field of dramaturgy-actor, we tried to use the later theories of thinkers such as Edvard Brands, Eugenio Barba and Jeffrey Proel. The present article, using analytical-descriptive method based on dramaturgy theories, presents a model of communication between dramaturgy and actor in the dynamic atmosphere of postmodern theater, which relies on three sides of imagination and conceptualization (a priori agent), Analysis and practice (current agent) and production and performance (posterior agent). Theater in general sense, and acting in the specific, are faculties that are in an internal structure; as the organic force and an external structure as dynamic force, are dependent. The result of the study shows that the combination of the phrase dramaturge / actor plays an important role in the actor’s attention to theoretical, practical and critical considerations to eliminate the shortcomings of rehearsals in the process of creating a role during a certain time.