Dramaturgy is a mysterious thing. You’re never quite sure where it begins or where it ends. It’s like trying to sketch the edges of a foggy landscape—everything is hazy. Nobody really knows where dramaturgy stops, but we all know where it starts: the moment a theatre piece is first proposed, when the seed of an idea begins to sprout. The concept remains elusive.

Of course, there are personæ we associate with the birth of dramaturgy. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Otto Heinrich Gemmingen-Hornberg, and the moralist Adolph Knigge—figures who trace dramaturgy back to German nationalism. But the story doesn’t stop there. Some have even tried to argue that Aristotle was the first dramaturg. That is hardly plausible. Aristotle was a philosopher, not an artist. He wasn’t working with playwrights, and theatre back then operated in ways that would feel alien to us today. Despite the surprisingly persistent and lingering influence of his Poetics, it’s off the mark to say Aristotle was the dramaturg of his time.

It’s this ambiguity, that Cathy Turner and Synne K. Behrndt discuss in their book Dramaturgy and Performance. For them the dramaturgy is elusive and elastic, a term that stretches and shifts depending on how you look at it. And yet, this elusiveness hasn’t stopped people from applying it to a wide range of fields—from analyzing society (Erving Goffman), to exploring the human psyche (Paul Helwig), to examining education (Neil Keating).

When I was writing Radical Dramaturgy, I tried to capture all the theories and ideas that support the existence of dramaturgy as a distinct occupation. What I discovered was this: dramaturgy exists as an orphan, a child of modern bourgeois nationalism. In the 18th century, art was seen as a tool to shape the moral fabric of the nation, to build social cohesion. It was all about educating the public, and in that context, dramaturgy made perfect sense. As Jürgen Habermas would argue, dramaturgy only comes alive in front of a public, in the Öffentlichkeit—the public sphere. It’s not just about the art itself; it’s about how that art interacts with society.

So what does this mean for the dramaturg? Well, it means that every dramaturg is essentially the supervisor of the director—a role that didn’t emerge until much later. The dramaturg isn’t just a literary advisor or a director’s defender in the face of public criticism. No. In the theatre’s division of labor, the dramaturg holds significant responsibility. She’s the one who connects the public with the artwork, who ensures the message is communicated clearly and meaningfully. Like a thesis supervisor or a research mentor, the dramaturg’s name should be the first on the list of a performance’s credits.

In this sense, the dramaturg doesn’t just contribute to the authorship of a piece; she carries the weight of it. This is where the dramaturg’s power and respect should be rooted. And if we truly want to see dramaturgy as a profession, not just an occupation, then we need to raise the standards—education, ethics, and public responsibility. And yes, of course—a decent pay.

But why does it all matter? Because dramaturgy is the residue of a modern vision for community. It’s about transforming the Volk (the people) into a true Öffentlichkeit (public), about turning a mass of individuals into a democratic body. The key question we face today is how to take this outdated vision and apply it to our fractured, polarized world. How can we take the lessons of dramaturgy and use them to mend a divided society, to create a collective, democratic voice that can make decisions and take action?