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Dramaturgy has begun to a gain a place in the North American dance community and, slowly, in university dance programs. For at least a decade, dance dramaturgy has been a regular topic of conversation at annual meetings of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), which gave a 2006 residency grant to Nichole Grantshar to work on Atlanta Ballet’s 2007 production of The Great Gatsby. European contemporary dance choreographers have embraced dance dramaturgy for years. Andre Lepecki, who has dramaturged work by European choreographers like Meg Stuart, teaches dance dramaturgy as part of his dramaturgy course in New York University’s Performance Studies graduate program. Beginning in 2008, Toronto’s York University, a perennial leader in dance studies, began an MFA in dance, with a specialization in dramaturgy.

The introduction of dramaturgy at Yale was the watershed for the profession in America, but it bypassed serious examination of the nature and purpose of dramaturgy because of its a priori assumption that the dramaturg was not a "dramatist" but a "critic." The success of the Yale model erased the American model of dramaturgy that had emerged in the early twentieth century. "Drama" was originally invented, created, performed and staged by "dramaturgs" The playwright-dramatist remained the animateur of the theatre into the early twentieth century until the advent of the specialist "professional" director. Unfortunately, the cult of the director became so pronounced in the twentieth century that the director is now seen as the sine qua non of the theatrical event, replacing the playwright and actor as the arbiter and center of the dramatic creation. Save us from the directors! Let us destroy the parasite directors and return theatre to the dramatists.

Although the rent case has propelled dramaturgy into the mainstream, it has also made the focus of the discipline too oriented towards commercial deal making.

The common model of contemporary theatrical process assigns the dramaturgical role to a single individual. However, Rude Mechanicals' collaborative process allows the dramaturgical role to be more fluidly defined and divided among multiple participants, especially the playwright and director. Rude Mechanicals (Rude Mechs) is an Austin based theatre collective, devising collaboratively created new works for the stage. In this co-written essay, two Rude Mechs company members discuss how dramaturgy is shared when they work on a new piece using three examples of collaboratively dramaturged shows: curst & Shrewd, Lipstick Traces, and Requiem for Tesla.

Dramaturgs are among the most talkative of theatre makers. To the extent that language and conversation are central tools both of theatre and theatre making, the dramaturg's volubility is an asset. And yet, in rehearsal it is traditionally the director or actor who has the floor and so it is that a legion of talkative dramaturgs has had to learn a discipline of silences: silence as frustration, as power, as pleasure, as necessity, and more. Proehl's essay uses silence as a synecdoche, as the part that opens on the whole of language and relationship in rehearsal.

This article presents a model that is useful in the creation of new works as well as the analysis of existing pieces. Through exploration of the qualities of The Four Elements (Air, Fire, Water, Earth), artists as well as academics can discover characteristic behavior and interactive patterns in characters and their relationships with each other and with the world of the play. Exercises are offered to apply the models. Universal understanding of the elements gives this methodology the potential to work across cultural divides and in a range of situations.

This article describes a process of team dramaturgy at Cornish College of the Arts. The team was comprised of one student and five faculty from across departments and disciplines. The record of the experience shows how the team gathered material and how they presented it over the first four days of the rehearsal period. The record is not only an example of a unique collaboration, it demonstrates the effective use of dramaturgical presentation during the rehearsal process. Furthermore, it illustrates how dramaturgy can facilitate the integration of the humanities and sciences into the professional arts curriculum.

The traditional relationship between student and professor--in which the student assumes that the professor knows something that the student does not--is the polar opposite of the relationship between the production dramaturg and the director--in which the dramaturg provides information that the director does not know, and seeks to stimulate the director with new ways of looking at the play. And so one of the tasks of an undergraduate dramaturgy course is to invert the normal teacher-student relationship, acculturating the student to a different role and power relationship.

For the past twenty years, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) has served the theater community by cultivating, developing and promoting the field of dramaturgy. The author explores the future of the organization, and, by extension, the profession.

Running a playwriting organization is like doing good dramaturgy for a play. Both require skill, imagination, a good sense of timing, and flexibility. Art and craft define the work of The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis as staff and myriad theatre artists collaborate with playwrights to develop theirNourNnew work We orchestrate workshops and readings for writers and their collaborators, from composers to choreographers to classical cellists, then see the work through to production in our season. Our support provides what the playwright needs, when the play requires it. The result: the writer's process honored, the play's dramaturgy a success.

The ways in which dramaturgy has been marked as female labor in America demand rethinking since that feminization has made it difficult for the profession to generate and receive the respect it deserves.