On Dramaturgy

From Daniel Alexander Jones's Dramaturgy class.
What does a dramaturg on an old play usually do?

Research, and lots of it. Looking at history, language, politics, social underpinnings, coded talk...the job of the dramaturg is often to awaken a sense of the many contexts in which a play is/was operating at the time of its inception, to bring to the surface the multiple forces that impinge upon a play.

The play, in other words, is not a static, closed entity.

Of course, neither is a NEW play. And the New Play Dramaturg can work much the same way, helping the playwright to investigate his or her own impulses, and to examine the multiple forces working on his or her own play.

A good question: Where did you get the first impulse to write this play? Those are wonderful seeds from which to grow a conversation about the play.