User login
Jan 2nd: Martha Steketee
Jan 2 - Jan 9: Martha Steketee 
Focus: "During my “tweet week” I’ll be covering several areas of my dramaturgical theatrical adventures in New York City -- play development, new play dramaturgy, and theatre criticism. On Monday January 2nd I’ll be attending a Dramatists Guild “solo writer/actor” event that should inspire ruminations on a one woman show in development based on the life of 1930s and 1940s makeup woman Dorothy Ponedel for which I have been providing research and dramaturgical consultation. I'll be tweeting from January 5th through the 8th about the Young Playwrights National Playwriting Competition Conference where I am paired with playwright Benjamin Sprung-Keyser and his play What All Schoolchildren Learn. And throughout the week I expect to reflect on several productions I plan to attend as critic."
Bio: Martha Wade Steketee was a court researcher and domestic policy analyst for many years, after studying literature and theatre at Harvard and child welfare policy at Washington University in St. Louis. She is now a freelance dramaturg in New York City who has worked in the past year with Young Playwrights, Primary Stages, Sundance Theatre Lab, and PlayPenn as script reader, teaching artist, and production dramaturg. She writes theatre reviews (currently at urbanexcavations.com) and is co-chair of the New York City Project Team for the American Theatre Archive Project. She looks everywhere for ways to replicate the “Young Critics Circle” project (for which she was a founding “mentor”) developed in Chicago by the Goodman Education Department and Association for Women Journalists that provides experience in theatre criticism to high school students.
Questions from LMDA:
What is your definition of dramaturgy?
"Dramaturgy for me is an orientation and a process. Start with a love for theatre and a love for listening, throw in collaboration with abandon, animate with questions while resisting a preconceived result, and frame with an excitement for research to inform the art."
What is your favorite project?
"Production dramaturgy on canonical works can be just as thrilling as enthusiastic, collaborative conversations with a compatible playwright on a newly emerging piece of theatre. I number among my most exciting two projects from my years in Chicago: production dramaturgy on Writers’ Theatre’s Othello in 2007 (James Meredith as Othello and John Judd as Iago – I mean, what a privilege to be in that rehearsal room) and new play development work with playwright Lisa Dillman and The Walls at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in 2009."
