Dramaturg

Ilana Brownstein ’98

by Karol Crosbie

Ilana Brownstein, who specializes in the illumination of ideas, explains her funny-sounding title with just the right details. The “urg” part of “dramaturg” comes from the Greek “ourgia,” which means “to work.” A dramaturg is someone who “ works a drama,” in the same way that a metallurgist transforms raw ore into a new form.

Brownstein, who has been “working dramas” at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston since 2002, discovered her passion for working with playwrights when she was at Wooster. An internship during her junior year at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York ignited the flame, and her Independent Study fanned it.

For her I.S., Brownstein worked with an ensemble of firstyear Wooster women to write, produce, and perform a play. A Visionary Picnic opened on Valentine’s Day, 1998, on Freedlander’s main stage. “When I experienced the excitement of these young women, who had never before written a play, seeing their work performed on stage, I knew what I wanted to do,” Brownstein remembers.

An internship at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the foremost producer of new plays in this country, and an M.F.A. at Yale in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism further prepared Brownstein for her position as dramaturg and literary manager of the Huntington Theatre Company. She was given full rein to create a program to develop the work of new playwrights, particularly local writers. “Not many regional theaters are relevant to the artistic communities that live and work in their own backyards,” says Brownstein. “By nurturing local artists and using the resources that are at our fingertips, we’re funneling resources back into the community.”

Brownstein developed the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, which gives four emerging playwrights an opportunity to be writers in residence at the Huntington for two years. As Brownstein reads the hundreds of plays submitted by local artists and works with the “cream that has risen to the top,” she says she applies three basic questions: “First, what are the playwrights’ intentions? Second, do they succeed? And third, is their goal worthy? Is this a story that invites an audience to feel as though they were experiencing an emotion for the first time?”

Brownstein, who also teaches contemporary drama at Boston University, tells her students that reading critically is like developing a muscle. And every dramaturg has her own tricks. For example, when Brownstein is reading dialogue for the first time, she often ignores designations of which character is speaking. “If I can’t tell by the tone of their voices who is speaking, then something’s wrong,” she says.

But the dramaturg’s most important tool is developing a relationship of trust with the playwright. “Like anyone in the arts, playwrights have to be able to trust the source of their feedback,” she says.

In addition to helping writers develop their voice—their ability to connect with the audience—Brownstein also researches a play’s location and historic time period, in order to provide imagery and details. She writes program notes, conducts audience education events, and edits a journal.

“Theatre really is a collaborative art,” she says. “The play doesn’t live until it’s transferred to the hands of a director, actors, designers, and to the audience. My job is to work with all of those constituencies. But my relationship with the writers— that’s what I love, that’s really what sustains me.”