The Hamburg Dramaturgy (German: Hamburgische Dramaturgie) is a highly influential work on drama by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, written between 1767 and 1769 when he worked as a dramaturg for Abel Seyler's Hamburg National Theatre. It was not originally conceived as a unified and systematical book, but rather as series of essays on the theater, which Lessing wrote as commentary on the plays of the short-lived Hamburg National Theater. This collection of 101 short essays represents one of the first sustained critical engagements with the potential of theater as a vehicle for the advancement of humanistic discourse. In many ways, the Hamburg Dramaturgy defined the new field of dramaturgy, and also introduced the term.

While eighteenth-century playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing made numerous contributions in his lifetime to the theater, the text that best documents his dynamic and shifting views on dramatic theory is also that which continues to resonate with later generations – the Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 1767–69). This collection of 104 short essays represents one of the eighteenth century’s most important critical engagements with the theater and its potential to promote humanistic discourse. Lessing’s essays are an immensely erudite, deeply engaged, witty, ironic, and occasionally scathing investigation of European theatrical culture, bolstered by deep analysis of Aristotelian dramatic theory and utopian visions of theater as a vehicle for human connection. This is the first complete English translation of Lessing's text, with extensive annotations that place the work in its historical context. For the first time, English-language readers can trace primary source references and link Lessing’s observations on drama, theory, and performance not only to the plays he discusses, but also to dramatic criticism and acting theory. This volume also includes three introductory essays that situate Lessing’s work both within his historical time period and in terms of his influence on Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment theater and criticism. The newly translated Hamburg Dramaturgy will speak to dramaturgs, directors, and humanities scholars who see theater not only for entertainment, but also for philosophical and political debate.

The Hamburg Dramaturgy's collection of 104 short essays represents one of the eighteenth-century's most important critical engagements with the theater and its potential to promote humanistic discourse. This is the first complete English translation of this text, with extensive annotations that place the work in its historical context.

Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre is a substantial history of the origins of dramaturgs and literary managers. It frames the explosion of professional appointments in England within a wider continental map reaching back to the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century Germany, examining the work of the major theorists and practitioners of dramaturgy, from Granville Barker and Gotthold Lessing to Brecht and Tynan. This study positions Brecht's model of dramaturgy as central to the worldwide revolution in theatre-making practices, and it also makes a substantial argument for Granville Barker's and Tynan's contributions to the development of literary management. With the territories of play and performance-making being increasingly hotly contested, and the public's appetite for new plays showing no sign of diminishing, Mary Luckhurst investigates the dramaturg as a cultural and political phenomenon.

In this book, Wendy Arons examines how women writers used theater and performance to investigate the problem of female subjectivity and to intervene in the dominant discourse about ideal femininity. Arons shows how contemporary demands for sincerity and authenticity placed a peculiar burden on women in the public sphere, especially on actresses, who - like professional writers - overstepped the boundaries of what was considered proper behavior for women. Paradoxically, in their representations of ideal women engaged in performance, these writers expose ideal femininity as an impossible act, even as they attempt to perform it in their writing and in their lives.

From Aristotle's Poetics to Vaclav Havel, the debate about the nature and function of theatre has been marked by controversy. Daniel Gerould's landmark work, Theatre/Theory/Theatre, collects history's most influential Eastern and Western dramatic theorists – poets, playwrights, directors and philosophers – whose ideas about theatre continue to shape its future. In complete texts and choice excerpts spanning centuries, we see an ongoing dialogue and exchange of ideas between actors and directors like Craig and Meyerhold, and writers such as Nietzsche and Yeats. Each of Gerould's introductory essays shows fascinating insight into both the life and the theory of the author. From Horace to Soyinka, Corneille to Brecht, this is an indispensable compendium of the greatest dramatic theory ever written.

Dramaturgy in the Making maps contemporary dramaturgical practices in various settings of theatre-making and dance to reveal the different ways that dramaturgs work today. It provides a thorough survey of three major areas of practice - institutional dramaturgy, production dramaturgy and dance dramaturgy - with each illustrated through a range of case studies that illuminate methodology and which will assist practitioners in developing their own 'dramaturgical toolbox'. In tracing the development of the role of the dramaturg, the author explores the contribution of Lessing, Brecht and Tynan, foundational figures who shaped the practice. She excavates the historical and theoretical contexts for each strand of the work, uniquely offering a history of dance dramaturgy and its associated theories. Based on extensive research, the volume features material from the author's interviews with fifty eminent professionals from Europe and North America, including: Robert Blacker, Jack Bradley, DD Kugler, Ruth Little and Hildegard De Vuyst. Through these, a detailed and precise insight is provided into dramaturgical processes at organisations such as the Akram Khan Company, les ballets C de la B (Gent), the National Theatre and the Royal Court (London), the Schaubühne (Berlin) and The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab (Utah), among others. Dramaturgy in the Making will prove indispensable to anyone working in theatre or wanting to better understand the dramaturgical processes in performance-making today. The book features a foreword by Geoff Proehl, author of Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey.

This book examines the appropriation of theatre and theatrical performance by ideologies of humanism, in terms that continue to echo across the related disciplines of literary, drama, theatre, and performance history and studies today. From Aristotle onward, theatre has been regulated by three strains of critical poiesis: the literary, segregating theatre and the practices of the spectacular from the humanizing work attributed to the book and to the internality of reading; the dramatic, approving the address of theatrical performance only to the extent that it instrumentalizes literary value; and the theatrical, assimilating performance to the conjunction of literary and liberal values. These values have been used to figure not only the work of theatre, but also the propriety of the audience as a figure for its socializing work, along a privileged dualism from the aestheticized ensemble—harmonizing actor, character, and spectator to the essentialized drama—to the politicized assembly, theatre understood as an agonistic gathering.

This ground-breaking collection focuses on how theatre, dance, and other forms of performance are helping to transform our ecological values. Top scholars explore how familiar and new works of performance can help us recognize our reciprocal relationship with the natural world and how it helps us understand the way we are connected to the land.

What Is Dramaturgy?attempts to document, by way of articles, statements, and bibliographies, the dramaturg's profession, which began with Lessing in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century and was instituted in the United States two hundred years later during the rise of the regional theatre movement. As critics-in-residence (also known as literary managers), dramaturgs perform a variety of tasks: broadly speaking, they select and prepare playtexts for performance, advise directors, and educate the audience; they are translators, theatre historians, public lecturers, even «artistic consciences.» Dramaturgy literally means «the craft or the techniques of dramatic composition considered collectively», and in a sense the dramaturg is the dramatist's representative or advocate in the theatre. That is, he is the guardian of the text - new as well as old - and therefore a person whose work is necessary for the revival of dramatic art in our time. What Is Dramaturgy?is dedicated in the end not only to promoting the dramaturg's function, but also to anticipating his creation of an intellectually illumined American theatre.