Dramaturging Your New Year: 5 questions to ask before creating New Year’s Resolutions

By Heidi Schmidt

Historically, I’ve been deeply suspicious of New Year’s Resolutions. I mean, how often do these resolutions make it through January, let alone the year? And if something’s not working, why wait for a specific time of year to fix it? As I get older, however, I’m coming around to the idea that it’s helpful to carve out time to really take stock. It’s easy to get locked in survival mode (finish this project, meet this deadline, remember to call your Mom, meet another deadline, try to still have friends while you finish 3 more projects...), and survival mode can make it tough to pause, ask some big questions, and formulate a course correction if you need one. So January 1 is as good a time as any to carve out some time.

Dramaturgy is all about asking the right questions, so here are 5 that I’ve found helpful to ask myself periodically:

Are you happy where you are? We work in an industry where we’re told all the time, from people inside and outside our line of work, that we should be grateful and happy just to be involved. That’s great for award speeches, but what we do is generally difficult, demanding, and undervalued. Every time I hear someone say “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life” I want to punch something. So it’s absolutely valid to ask yourself periodically if you’re still happy doing this work. And if the answer’s no, that’s okay. It might be temporary because you’re working on a project that your heart just isn’t invested in, or because you’re not where you want to be yet. Or it might mean that you have to make some tough decisions about your relationship to the theatre in general and the kinds of projects you’re saying yes to. If the answer is yes, you’re blissfully happy doing what you’re doing, that’s amazing! Take a minute to be grateful for that.

What do you want? For some of us, this is an easy question. For some it’s a lot more complicated, especially if our wants have shifted or we’re pushing up against expectations. I went to grad school because I wanted to be a university professor and teach theatre. About three years into my PhD program, I finally realized I was unhappy and had been for some time. I’d had some romantic notion of what a career in academia would look like, and the life I was living wasn’t that. And despite my efforts to be frugal and responsible, I’d been accumulating a solid chunk of student debt along the way that made me feel trapped in life choices I desperately wanted to take back, but couldn’t. While I was trying to make sense of all of that, a close friend asked me point blank one night: “What do you want?” And I burst into tears because I could not answer the question, other than wanting to not be homeless. All my wants were in negative terms – I didn’t want a full-time academic career, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around positive wants. It took awhile. There was a lot of journaling. Once I figured out that the thing making me happiest was actually making theatre (not just writing about it), I was able to start building a plan. I kept working on my dissertation part time while reaching out to every theatre company in the area looking into freelance directing and dramaturgy work. When I finished my PhD – at long last – I was able to transition relatively smoothly into a combo platter life of freelance dramaturgy, part time administrative work, adjunct teaching, etc. I figured it all out, but I had to learn to name my wants and give myself permission for them to change. Take some time (hiking, a bubble bath, an intensive date with your journal, therapist, or significant other): what have you been telling yourself you want/need? Is that still true? Is there an impulse in there somewhere that you’ve been ignoring because you’re committed to old goals?

If you still want what you’ve always wanted, awesome. But try to phrase it concretely. If you’ve always wanted to be a playwright and you still want to be a playwright, what does “be a playwright” mean to you? What does that life look like? How is this year’s vision different from how you envisioned playwriting a year or two ago? Is it carving out an hour or two each morning to write before your other job(s)? Is it writing full time? Is it defined by how many plays you’re writing per year? Publishing? Production counts? Fellowships? Do the people around you know what you want? They can’t help you get it if they don’t know what it is.

Is your resume getting you where you want to go? Take a minute (or an hour) to update your resume. Where are the gaps between where you are and where you want to be? What story does your resume tell someone who doesn’t already know you? Are you grant writing when you’d rather be playwriting? Working locally when you want to be working nationally? Production dramaturging Shakespeare when you really want to be developing new work?

I have a tendency to focus on what’s next – the million things I haven’t done, to borrow a phrase. Even as you’re looking ahead, though, it’s nice to take a minute to look backward and give yourself credit for what you’ve already accomplished.

How do you fit into your theatrical ecosystem? Seeing yourself objectively from the outside can be tough. But if you can see your work, your resume, your fellowship application materials, your job applications the way an artistic director (or granting committee, or casting director...) sees you, you’re leaps and bounds ahead. Finding the right fit for yourself has a lot to do with balancing what you want and need with what a producer wants and needs. If you can, find an opportunity to sit on the other side of the table, so to speak. If you’re an actor, finding an opportunity to sit in on auditions from the director’s side of things can completely change how you approach audition processes. If you’re a playwright, a chance to evaluate plays and fellowship applications for a company or festival can teach you a lot about how to position yourself.

A few years ago, I applied for an Education Director position at a well-respected theatre company. I tailored my cover letter to highlight years of teaching and administrative experience with kids and teens at a Shakespeare Festival. I made it through the first round of interviews, but when my resume landed on the artistic director’s desk, his reaction was, “What’s with all this Shakespeare? We teach playwriting.” I didn’t get the job, but I did learn something useful about how someone else sees my resume and how (not) to frame my experience.

Are the projects you’re working on serving you and your goals? Before saying yes to any project or job, I ask myself three questions: 1) Does it build or diversify my resume in a useful way? 2) Does it pay the rent? 3) Does it make me happy or bring me joy? Your questions might look a little bit different, depending on your financial situation, where you are in your career, and how you’re balancing jobs for other people/organizations v. self-directed projects. But I highly recommend developing some kind of decision matrix for taking on new projects. A full-time office job might offer financial stability and health insurance, which might free up a lot of mental energy for writing. Or the rigidity of the schedule might prevent you from ever attending a rehearsal again. That stage management gig might open up a relationship to a person or company you really want to work with. Or it might be one more line item in a resume full of stage management gigs that label you a stage manager for life. (Again, if that’s what you want – awesome! If you’re trying to shift gears, maybe it’s time to say no.)

Once you’ve got a solid sense of where you are and what you want, that’s the time to start thinking about setting goals or adopting New Year’s Resolutions. Good luck and Happy New Year!

Heidi Schmidt, PhD is the Assistant Director of Outreach and Resident Dramaturg at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder, Colorado. https://cupresents.org/artist/227/heidi-schmidt/