Twitter Project: Jules Odendahl-James

Bio: Jules Odendahl-James is a scholar/artist who works as a director and dramaturg primarily in the Triangle, NC and serves as the Regional Vice-President for the Southeast for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (@LMDAmericas). Her research interests are in digital dramaturgy, documentary theatre, sci+art collaboration, and the visibility of and parity for women and artists of color in contemporary American theatre. This spring she’ll direct Meg Miroshnik’s The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls at Durham’s award-winning Manbites Dog Theater. She sits on the Steering Committee for The Process Series (@ProcessSeries), a new works in development unit at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Institute for Arts and Humanities. She is a Board Member for Hidden Voices (@HiddenVoicesUS) a justice through storytelling performance company and is the Research Director for the advocacy group, Ladies of the Triangle Theatre (@TriThrLadies). She tweets @naturalreadhead.

"Focus" for the week: I'll be tweeting about the #WikiTurgy project that Catherine Rodriguez and Russ Dembin and I have been doing for the past six months -  we've got big plans for it as we head into the LMDA conference the fall! I'd also like to talk about digital dramaturgy in general. How dramaturgs leverage new technologies for our own benefit and perhaps serve as good critics of and advocates for (when appropriate) how these new spheres might expand our reach as theater makers, community builders, and arts advocates.

Questions from LMDA:

What is your definition of dramaturgy?: I've been working with the notion of the dramaturg as "performance geneticist" for the past year or so since I put it forward in the Dramaturgy special issue of Theater Topics. For me, that idea means I work at the intersection of where plays are made (and their specific histories of creation and production) and where they meet an audience (how they work in relationship to current institutions and communities) and how the negotiate their legacies (where/how they might endure and move across the theater ecosystem). Sometimes this process means I'm more like a genetic engineer vs. a geneticist who studies a system as given; I actually get to have input on the very core of a piece when I work with a playwright on a new piece or with an ensemble on a devising project. 

What is your dream project?: I'd love to work with The Civilians on a project, any project. Being a dramaturg/director that often works within an academic theater context, I love The Civilian's notion of "investigative theater" and the way they blur boundaries between documentary, musical, and performance art forms/genres. 

Follow along with @LMDAmericas

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