Template: Royal A, Font: , Date: 16/04/2014; 3B2 version: 9.1.406/W Unicode (May 24 2007) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/RC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415658492.3d 52 Dramaturg as context manager A phenomenological and political practice Graça P. Corrêa Dramaturgy implies a keen perception, an extensively sought orientation, and a steadfast purpose in the process of interpreting and creating an artwork. Dramaturgs love texts, and texts are everywhere: not relegated to written or verbal words, they exist as you walk, as you gaze, as you breathe. Within the premise that texts are compositions of signs in every form – as Jacques Derrida proclaims, “all is text and all is writing [écriture]” 1 – dramaturgy may be seen as what animates the text; it is the spirit of the text. Dramaturgy is also a political practice. Dramaturg-director Bertolt Brecht was concerned with producing a political theatre that would galvanize historical consciousness and ignite social change; he therefore broke away from mimetic representation and provoked spectating awareness through distancing/estranging effects and other “epic” techniques. 2 Brecht’s political aesthetics, however, is inse- parable from a specific historical context, namely the need to discontinue the dramatic illusion produced by well-made naturalistic drama that tended to elicit passive empathy from the audience. Following Augusto Boal, who claims that “all theatre is necessarily political,” 3 I consider that playtexts may produce oppositional political effects in many forms and through different techniques, without being committed to conveying a prescriptive political message. In effect, a contemporary political dramaturgy should address the micropolitics of power or the ways normative values and institutionalized modes of production permeate personal relationships and individual desires. In a dramaturgical encounter we aesthetically engage with a text by experiencing its material qualities and letting it interact with our own lived body and imagination. That is why, dramaturgically speaking, the same play can be viewed differently by separate individuals and at distinct times, since it is a compositional score of ideas, sensations, and emotions that is open to new configurations through an interaction with the individual imaginative activity of dramaturgs, directors, designers, and actors. By implying a subjective engagement with an object-text, dramaturgy is also a phenomenological practice. Inspired by the writings of French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gaston Bachelard, phenomenology foregrounds the non-linguistic material aspects of both drama and performance, calling attention to space, bodily configuration, kinesthetic patterns, handling and presence of objects, light and 308