DRAMATURG TRANSCRIPTION

NK-1 2018

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
PADANG STATE UNIVERSITY
2021/2022
 I Read in a huge number of scripts. This is part of my job. I open a script really hoping to
find a new voice. Hi, I’m Ann Catanio, I'm the dramaturg at Lincoln Center.

This definition of a dramaturg is an editor in a publishing house or specifically an

acquisitions editor in a publishing house. Our primary responsibility of course to replace that are
submitted to the theater like an editor, would read, plays and make recommendations based on
that. We also work on productions that a new place. We work as an editor would work with a
writer on suggesting thoughts and rewrites changes cuts. When we work on classical plays, we do
you know, prepared text, make changes or cuts it's a job that that requires a knowledge of theater
history and knowledge of languages and knowledge of literature, and it also requires a great
working knowledge of theater of actors of directing how plays are put together and plays are built.

I come from a family of scientists. My father was a scientist. My mother studied chemistry.
My brother went to MIT, and I was actually a physics major in college, and I got interested in
theater just because I loved the theater that I was seeing at that time. I was living in bay area, and
I was fortunate enough to make some connections and get involved the american conservatory
theater during its glory days under Bill Ball. And I worked as the assistant to Edward Hastings
who was the associate artistic director and that was really a connection and a relationship that
changed my life. He was the on who said to me “you should graduate school in theater”. He wrote
me a letter and I was accepted at the Yale School of Drama and critism, and then, I was fortunate
enough to actually get a job in the theater and that was the Literary Manager of the Phoenix, and I
came in to my first day of work to the scond day of rehearsal of uncommon women and other by
Wendy Wasserstein who turned to me and said “thank god you are here and no on has ever had a
happier introduction to their professional life”, then I have courtesy of courtesy of Wendy.

I have worked at the Phoenix at the acting company at second stage. I came here and I
have been called the “dramaturg” literary manager. So as far as my experience goes literary
managers and dramaturgs are the same job. I have always liked the world dramaturg because
nobody knew what it meant. For me, it also implies uh co-editing as I do with John Guer, the
Lincoln Center Theater review which is a literary review that we produce three times a year that
is sort of an added conversation to the plays we present with our audiences. I also run Lincoln
Center Director’s Lab which is a large scale project that the theater does for emerging stage
directors. When need, I do sometimes small sometimes very massive research for actors in
productions if that is called for.

So, it is a kind of job that can be whatever you make it to be, depending on the needs of
your theater and your own interests. I guess we had an extraordinary time here on the coast of
utopia. Hiding behind my door, I have kept off a long four pages sheet of paper that I put together
to really understand all the chronological specifics of that very complex play. Everything in that
production with very few exceptions is true. I had the kind of wonderful task of seeing which scene
belonged when. So everything that was needed by the company is on this rather long sheet that
was an exciting thing too to find that kind of research. Because that company was so in love with
the play, they knew everything. So they did not have to take rehearsel time asking questions like
“when did Blinsky meet Hertzon...”. they knew that they could tell him not only when they knew
it, but how and it was all done.

When you are a dramaturg, you work with the director, Mark Lamos, our director who is
working right now in the Grand Manor. The director is in charge of the interpretation. The directors
in charge of the room, you have never doing anything the director does not know about. What i
did for this was to use the great resources upstairs of the Lincoln Center Library for the performing
arts. They actually have correspondence between Catherine Cornell and her husband Guthrie
McClintock Boyd Gaines place. Guthrie McClintock and Kate Burton plays Catherine Cornell, so
we arranged for the company to go upstairs and see this material. the play is by of course Pete
Gurney and he did meet Catherine Cornell. When he was a young man and he set out very
charmingly at the beginning of the play the actual meeting. It is the standard lovely stage door and
ecounteer. Then, the rest of the play is his imagined encounter. He is invited backstage and they
have a whole scene, long play together.

We are now at the beginning of a tech rehearsal which is traditionally the time when the
dramaturg goes away or sits at the back of the house and all of these people who are passing behind
us have very important things to as, and my job is done basically. Each production is totally
different. And that is one of the great things about drink being a drama trick. If you look around
my office, you will see piles of books. Books about spirituals that I worked on when we did Joe
Turner’s come and gone along with books about organism which I were used for in the next room
by Sarah Rule. Every six months, it is something radically different. This is the ideal job for people
who love literature who speak languages who understand love actors. When I go onto a stage and
I see a ghost light, I am a happy person and that has never ceased. It is a funny combination of
characteristics and having people recognize me on the street is not something that I enjoy. If I did,
I would not be happy in the job.