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Dramaturgy in the Making: A User's Guide for Theatre Practitioners. By Katalin Trencsényi. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. 352.
In the foreword to Katalin Trencsényi's Dramaturgy in the Making, Geoffrey Proehl makes an explicit comparison between the work of the dramaturg and the work of the actor, arguing that the dramaturg is a role as pivotal, active, and involved with the process of theatrical creation as the actor herself. Understood this way, the "user's guide" portion of Trencsényi's subtitle takes on particular importance: she seeks to promote a shift in the conversation from "the question of 'what is a dramaturg?' to 'how does a dramaturg operate?'; 'how is dramaturgy done?'; and 'what do we need in our "dramaturgical toolbox"?'" (xx).
Trencsényi defines dramaturgy as the neurocognitive process of pattern recognition and arrangement-a broad definition that conceptualizes dramaturgy as both theory and practice simultaneously. Focusing on the practical angle of dramaturgy, she describes diverse dramaturgical practices through explicating specific case studies in the areas of "institutional dramaturgy," "production dramaturgy," and "dance dramaturgy." As a user's guide to active dramaturgy, Dramaturgy in the Making outlines some major issues in the field, and offers professional insight into solutions to those issues, rendering it useful as a guiding text for undergraduate dramaturgy coursework. It may be said, however, that a user's guide is effective only insofar as it can provide guidance, and most guides are designed for those with limited functional knowledge. The issues and solutions that Trencsényi outlines are, correspondingly, fairly obvious; dramaturgs with even only...