Is dramaturgy care work? Take More Care

Valerie Wehrens & Lili M. Rampre are the initiators of TakeMoreCare (TMC). TMC is a digital feedback platform for dancers, artists and artistic researchers from the independent Performing Arts Scene in Europe. Monthly meetings, hosted on ZOOM, foster exchange of working methods, research strategies, as well as the accompanying issues. For more info see: https://takemorecare.cargo.site

TakeMoreCare fills a gap in artistic infrastructure by offering artist-to-artist feedback and reflection after the end of education — which is often unavailable if one is not fully professionalized yet. Exchange with producing or funding institutions and their dramaturgs are then the most expected sites of reflection but bear deep power imbalances. 

Part of a freelance dramaturg’s craft — stemming from a close involvement in project-processes — are the intimate, sensitive dealings with the choreography of social dynamics (within a project-team, between the team and the theater, between the team/artist and the audience, with the supporting institutions, and many more). Dramaturgical work is a form of care that acts as an indispensable connective-tissue between contextualisation, conceptualisation and the creation of working methods within the artist’s work. As that, it needs to introduce new concepts to open up the work without challenging it too much. It needs to frame artworks based on their social relevance, often meeting highly specific expectations of funders and audiences. While translating theoretical concepts into artistic practice (or vice versa), it aims for finding the impossible balance of sustainability and innovation; allowing for deep conceptual thinking along a new project concept every 6-12 months.
 
In the context of this highly challenging tightrope walk, dramaturgy, next to the role of aesthetic care for the artistic work, often entails emotional care-work. This involves unexpected “therapy sessions” after shared meals, knowing when to offer encouragement instead of critique, strategically timing feedback to ensure it's relevant and digestible, and juggling relational aspects of positions like ‘colleague’, ‘trusted companion,’ and ‘friend.’ 

However, this care often compensates for the lack of structural support in precarious artistic conditions. Bojana Kunst warns that such (self-)care can lead to self-exploitation, as it sustains productivity while masking systemic failures. Naturalizing care and normalizing increasingly precarious conditions restricts our imagination, ultimately reinforcing the very systems we aim to challenge. 

This intersection of dramaturgical work and reproductive labor highlights the essential role of care in sustaining creative practices. By framing dramaturgical work as care, we can better understand the politico-economic status of the arts and the precariousness artists face, thereby advocating for systemic change and recognition of the value of this substantial labor in general. 

Given this hyper-precarious environment, within TMC, care evolves into a collective responsibility that supports the social fabric of our artistic landscape. Building on Pirkko Husemann’s and Janez Janša's concept of shared dramaturgy, TMC fosters ‘the dramaturgical’ as collective thinking through peer feedback. This expansive care is independent from TMC participants being involved or invested in each other’s works. Even though their short-engagement doesn’t address deeper social dynamics, it provides essential support by giving access to diverse perspectives. This ultimately frames our endeavor politically: it stresses how we, as an artistic community, are implicated in each other's works, even if we’re not deeply embedded in them. This form of dramaturgical care nurtures individual artistic practices as much as the communal artistic landscape we’re all part of. 

“Die Sorge ist und bleibt jene unabweisbare, kontinuierliche und transversale Linie des Lebens, und sie lässt sich nicht trennen vom ontologischen Prekärsein des Lebens selbst; doch eben deshalb steht sie auch im Mittelpunkt der Herstellung von Geschlechterhierarchien und der Gewalt gegen diejenigen, die anders sind. Die Sorge ist somit ein ambivalentes Vermögen,  das es permanent zu entmystifizieren gilt und das mit den Praxen und materiellen Prozessen in Beziehung zu setzen ist, durch die sie als ethisches und politisches Verhältnis konstituiert wird.” 


“Care is and remains that irrefutable, continuous and transversal line of life, and it cannot be separated from the ontological precariousness of life itself; but precisely for this reason it is also at the center of the production of gender hierarchies and violence against those who are different. Care is thus an ambivalent capacity that must be permanently demystified and related to the practices and material processes through which it is constituted as an ethical and political relationship.” 


“Sorge [erlaubt] die existenzielle Seite der Prekarität, verbreitete Gefühle von Verletzlichkeit, geteilte Emotionen und wiedererkennbare Lebensweisen an den Tag zu bringen[...]. In der Kunst finden wir also plötzlich heraus, dass wir ähnliche Arbeitsbedingungen teilen, obwohl wir einen unterschiedlichen ökonomischen Hintergrund haben, aber auch aus unterschiedlichen gesellschaftspolitischen Verhältnissen, geopolitischen Kontexten und privaten Verhältnissen kommen, und dies trägt zur Ausblendung von Machtdynamiken bei, die in der Normalisierung von Prekarität gleichwohl weiterexistieren. Auch Hierarchien werden aufrechterhalten: Selbst wenn uns Prekarität zusammenbringt, [...] werden dadurch nicht notwendig auch die Bedingungen verändert, unter denen wir arbeiten.”

“Care [allows] the existential side of precarity to bring to light widespread feelings of vulnerability, shared emotions and recognizable ways of life[...]. So in art we suddenly find out that we share similar working conditions, even though we have different economic backgrounds, but also come from different socio-political conditions, geopolitical contexts and private circumstances, and this contributes to the masking of power dynamics that nevertheless continue to exist in the normalization of precarity. Hierarchies are also maintained: Even if precarity brings us together, [...] it does not necessarily change the conditions under which we work.”