One of the book’s strengths is that while it tells a story about the creative process from the dramaturg’s point of view, it also offers rare and detailed insight into the dramaturgy of creative rehearsal processes. The book is, therefore, also relevant to anyone who is interested in learning more about theatre, performance-making and creative working processes ... The detailed case studies alone make Dramaturgy in the Making a useful and interesting addition to the growing literature on dramaturgy.
Studies in Theatre and Performance
By introducing dramaturg Mira Rafalowicz’s four-stage concept (exploration of the field, creating and shaping the material, finding a shape, performance gains its own life), Trencs´enyi is able to paint a broad comparative picture of different Western practices while still structuring and contextualizing the multiple voices and trying to find and formulate patterns and threads that connect the practices ranging from text-based and devised theatre to dance dramaturgies. In this, the monograph offers an alternative to the often quite eclectic ways in which edited collections present accounts on rehearsal practices.
Ann-Christine Simke
Theatre Research International
Dramaturgy in the Making first and foremost is a far-reaching book, with an international perspective and ambition ... This work is of an exemplary high quality, deep, and at the same time is infinitely useful and pragmatic.
Színház
Katalin Trencsényi's Dramaturgy in the Making is a welcome, wide-ranging discussion of dramaturgy, featuring historical overviews, geographic diversity, and contemporary case studies in both theatre and dance. It is refreshing and informative to have so many developmental processes described in detail and to hear the varying points of view about dramaturgy from core collaborators within the process.
DD Kugler, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Dramaturgy in the Making ... signals a generational shift. It assumes that for many answering the founding question – “What is dramaturgy?” – is no longer the central challenge for the field. It addresses instead a new and, for many of us, most welcome focus: exploring the rich range of practices found in the lives of individuals who have again and again demonstrated in their work as theatre artists why dramaturgy matters.
Geoff Proehl, University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, USA
[Trencsényi] has carried out richly informative interviews with a wide range of dramaturgs from across Europe and North America ... [The book's] real strength lies in its range of case studies, and the attention to the detail of specific production processes.
New Theatre Quarterly
[H]aving documentation of the challenges that a dramaturg will experience within the course of their work, and a litany of excellent and useful interviews that detail methods for overcoming those challenges, makes the chapters feel robust and readable, researched, and useful. … [T]he guidebook aspect of the text makes it appropriate and useful for undergraduates and emerging dramaturgs.
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