- Interview with Martine Kei Green-Rogers
We cannot pretend like race and gender don’t matter, because if they didn’t matter, racism and sexism and misogyny wouldn’t be a thing.
Martine Kei Green-Rogers is an associate professor at SUNY New Paltz, the fellowship associate at the Playwrights’ Center, past president of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and a freelance dramaturg. Her dramaturgical credits include productions with the Louisville Orchestra, Salt Lake Acting Company, Pioneer Theatre Company, Plan-B Theatre, the Goodman, Round House Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Court Theatre, CATCO, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
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First off, I just want you to tell me a little bit about how you got started in the theater world and, more specifically, dramaturgy and what drew you to it. And maybe for those people out there who are unsure of what a dramaturg does, describe what that job looks like.
I got started in dramaturgy as an undergrad. I attended Virginia Wesleyan College (which is now Virginia Wesleyan University) as a double major in theater and history. My very astute advisor at the time, Dr. Sally Shedd, basically said to me, “You do realize that there’s this thing that exists out in the world that marries all of these things that you love, right?” and I said, “No! Tell me more!” and the rest is history. I became that student because then I didn’t want to do anything besides dramaturg things for the department. That was funny, since that position didn’t exist on the shows, but I made it exist. They had to start forcing me to audition for things [End Page 19] in the department because I didn’t want to audition for things anymore. I just wanted to dramaturg things. This happened during my junior year, so I went from always being in show to “I don’t want to be in shows. I want to drama-turg the thing!” But that is how I found out that dramaturgy existed. Then during my senior year I started looking at grad schools. I cast a wide net to figure out my next step, and it just so happened that I, for a bit of irony, didn’t get into any of the schools that I’d applied to, minus the one that was specifically geared toward dramaturgy, which was awesome. So the universe made that decision for me in terms of continuing my studies.
In regard to my practice of dramaturgy, it’s an integrated form. I think the days of dramaturgy being about fetching a bunch of material, bringing it to rehearsal, and plopping it in front of people are long gone. I think the advent of super ridiculously long actor packets are gone too. That’s not how I practice dramaturgy. I have embraced “digiturgy,” which is about how media and, more specifically, technology impact the way that dramaturgs do their jobs. When I teach dramaturgy I give my students options. They can do a traditional actor packet, or they can do a website. Figuring out how to incorporate all of the media that we now have access to was not a thing that you could do very easily in rehearsal. I’m far more of an active dramaturg in that I am the type of artist who will collaborate with directors to discern the more experiential ways that actors, crew, and design teams can learn more about the world of the play. I’ve taken people to Pittsburgh, to August Wilson’s stomping grounds, in order to think through what this world was like. When we did Radio Golf at the Court Theatre, we all went golfing to have the experience of what it means to golf, because, unfortunately, much of the racial politics around Black people and golfing still exist. We learned about the logistics and mechanics of golfing while also thinking through questions such as, What does it mean to go to a golfing range and be the only people of color on that range? What is the look, what are the stares...