Dramaturgy: The Basics by Anne M. Hamilton and Walter Byongsok Chon (review)

Reviewed by: Dramaturgy: The Basics by Anne M. Hamilton and Walter Byongsok Chon Zachary A. Dorsey (He/Him) Dramaturgy: The Basics. Anne M. Hamilton and Walter Byongsok Chon. The Basics Series. Oxon: Routledge, 2023; pp. xv + 188. For anyone who has ever stumbled over the question "what is dramaturgy?" Anne M. Hamilton and Walter Byongsok Chon provide welcome assistance with "the basics" of a coherent and compelling answer. Across an introduction and eight short but substantial chapters, they explicate what they mean when they suggest that: "Dramaturgy, in short, is the art of storytelling" (1). Throughout their textbook, Hamilton and Chon nimbly describe the intersections of a dramaturgical process or practice, a dramaturgical sensibility, and the various roles of someone employed as a dramaturg. Their target audience is a beginning dramaturg looking for a primer on dramaturgy, but established dramaturgs and teachers of dramaturgy will likely find Hamilton and Chon's concise writing and trenchant examples energizing to consider as well. And particularly considering Hamilton and Chon's contention that "every theatre artist uses dramaturgical skills" (5), it isn't a stretch to think about ways that this book might be a boon to any twenty-first-century theatre artist as they learn how to ask quality questions and seek to become effective collaborators. In her foreword to the book, Susan Jonas—a leader in the field of dramaturgy and coeditor of the landmark Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Source Book (1997)—convincingly articulates that Hamilton and Chon are precisely the two people to write an introductory book on dramaturgy. Jonas cites the "sheer breadth of their experience, their global perspective, and their original thinking and innovative practices" (xiv). In their introduction, Hamilton and Chon detail their "nearly fifty years of experience in both institutional and freelance dramaturgy" (6) as a way of preparing their readers to understand their methodology for the book. In Dramaturgy: The Basics, they provide numerous practical examples from their own careers as a way of presenting a guide to dramaturgy and some best practices from those already out in the field practicing it. [End Page 106] After an introduction, they share chapters titled 1) Dramatic Theory and Script Analysis; 2) Reading as a Dramaturg; 3) Production Dramaturgy; 4) Dramaturgy of New Work; 5) Other Core Practices of Dramaturgy; 6) Dramaturg as Literary Manager; 7) Dramaturg as Critic and Editor; and 8) Dramaturg as Producer and Innovator. Besides step-by-step instructions, each chapter contains additional resources for readers to seek out as they look to further develop their skills or to continue thinking about the topics that Hamilton and Chon have introduced. Although many other texts give more details and perhaps more nuance than what Hamilton and Chon offer on specific tasks—on writing program notes, for instance, or conceiving and constructing a lobby display—Dramaturgy: The Basics gives straightforward starting points and clear recommendations, as well as references to what other practitioners and scholars in the field have published elsewhere. Among the most productive aspects of Hamilton and Chon's text is the way they complement their own writing with brief quotations solicited from other dramaturgs (set apart in gray boxes from their own text), simultaneously multiplying the perspectives offered and demonstrating a community or network of dramaturgs all variously working to define and describe the field. Dramaturgy: The Basics begins with a short history of dramaturgy and dramaturgs, including Lessing, Brecht, Tynan, the regional theatre movement, and LMDA. The book's first chapter after the introduction is a sprint through some "core texts and methods" (13) that are common to many script analysis and dramatic theory classes, such as Elinor Fuchs's "EF's Visit to a Small Planet," Aristotle's Poetics, Plato's The Republic, David Ball's Backwards and Forwards, and Gustav Freytag's pyramid as a model for story structure. This tightly written chapter scaffolds all of the chapters that follow as each builds upon the reading of scripts and the dramaturg's asking of questions in order to support playwrights, production teams, and audiences. Those readers expecting something groundbreaking or revolutionary in the early section of the book will be disappointed, but they've likely missed the point of...