Self-Ish Dramaturgy: Personal Practice At The Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival

I’m Aysha Zackria. I’m a 23 year old Queer Pakistani-American woman living in D.C. Through my experiences at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, I’ve learned to make my dramaturgical practice more personal and inclusive of myself.

After the KCACTF participants arrived in Washington, D.C., we were welcomed with remarks from Gregg Henry, Artistic Director of KCACTF, and Kelsey Mesa, the Manager of Theater Education at the Kennedy Center. The two shared their excitement for this year’s program: 2024 was the first full-length in-person national festival since 2019. There was an air of anticipation, but there was also a sense of relief that we had been able to achieve some semblance of normalcy, even as COVID hadn’t—and still hasn’t—completely disappeared.

The festival being held in D.C. was significant beyond it being in person. Participants had come from every corner of the United States to converge at its Capital in April of 2024 as the city and nation approached its next Presidential Election. This article was in development before the Election and published following its harrowing result. The Kennedy Center has recently become the subject of national attention due to Trump announcing his intention to commandeer its programming. Politics and art are always inextricably linked, but it’s never been truer than at this time and place.

The festival’s dramaturgy schedule was packed with meetings, shows, readings, panels, and workshops, including “Casting is Dramaturgy,” led by A.J. Links, an Emmy-awarded casting director, “Dramaturgy at Arena Stage” by Otis Ramsey-Zöe, Literary Manager, “Curating Dramaturgical Contributions” by Diane Brewer and Ambree Feaster, our two fearless program leaders, and “Dramaturgy and Collaboration: How to be a Human Being in the Creative Process” by Drew Lichtenberg, Artistic Producer at Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Mark Bly, National KCACTF Advisor, led a workshop entitled, “The Dramaturgical Impulse,” which advanced the idea that dramaturgs must feed their curiosity and encourage that of their collaborators. By cultivating a questioning spirit, dramaturgs become life-long learners. Every script and process requires attention and a sense of wonder. Serendipitously building upon Lichtenberg’s workshop, Bly cautioned us against hiding behind our research, and instead offered a person-centered approach that considers our own wholeness and humanity as well as our peers’. People first language was first coined by disability justice activists advocating quite literally to put the word “person” before the description of a disability to distinguish between someone’s personhood and their condition. Applying this idea more broadly, we can appreciate each other and ourselves as complex beings, rather than singular aspects of our identities.

Bringing yourself into your work also naturally leads to developing a network of collaborators and friends who know and value your creative aesthetic. One outstanding example of this was the panel of D.C. literary managers, Adrien-Alice Hansel at Studio Theatre, Naysan Mojgani at Round House Theatre, and Sonia Fernandez at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, whose familiarity with each other enlivened their discussion. Those of you who know me can already see where this is going, but I’ll get back to Woolly in a few sentences. The three discussed what an ideal playwright-dramaturg relationship might look like including how to offer feedback, ask the right questions, and gain each others’ trust. They also applied these tenets to their own institutional work of reading scripts and planning seasons. To see these practices in place, each of their theatres welcomed KCACTF participants to watch the shows they had running at the time.

The dramaturgy cohort saw A Jumping Off Point at Round House and Amm(i)gone at Woolly Mammoth. Amm(i)gone is a one-person show created and performed by Adil Mansoor. He invites his Pakistani mother to translate Antigone into Urdu as a means of exploring the tensions between family and faith. This show was simultaneously wrought with fear and stirring with hope. It explores his queerness, dramaturgical practice, and relationship with his mother, all of which struck me in a deeply personal way. I felt especially held because this marked the first time I had ever seen a Pakistani person’s work on stage, other than my own.

In addition to performing in Amm(i)gone, Adil also ran two workshops for the dramaturgs and directors. In “Directing Dramaturgy,” he did a deep dive on text analysis as a vital shared tool between collaborators. In “Embracing Your Hyphens As A Theatre Artist,” he talked about his own artistic multiplicity and strategies for embracing our own abundance of interests and skills. Adil’s offerings would have been immeasurably valuable to me coming from anyone, but they were especially meaningful coming from him. Even though this article is steeped in identity politics, I am wary of it because no identity group is a monolith, and a good story can move anyone regardless of who’s telling it. That being said, representation does truly matter. Having role models who look like you, share your language, and understand your background does make a difference.

I currently serve as the Miranda Family New Work and Artistic Producing Fellow at Woolly Mammoth, where the New Work department is entirely composed of me and Sonia. Although I already had started my application by the time I attended KCACTF, hearing Sonia describe her approach to dramaturgy and watching Amm(i)gone encouraged me to put even more of myself into my materials. Two weeks after leaving D.C., I submitted my application, and the rest is history.

Except that’s not entirely true. The final months of college and first months out in “the real world” can be fraught for many graduating seniors, and I was no exception. Even though the uncertain future was anxiety producing, I felt like I had made the most out of my time at Carnegie Mellon, and I was meeting the people who would guide me to whatever came next.

That feeling became more certain during my summer as a Literary Fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. My selection for this opportunity was one of the many gifts I received as a KCACTF participant. Over the course of the summer, I assisted with the National Puppetry Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Playwrights Conference, and the Cabaret and Performance Conference. I made a dramaturgical glossary, I tracked and printed script changes, I made lyric books, I compiled sheet music, and I learned how to participate in a professional office. I got to know Emily Lathrop, Helena Pennington, and Rebecca Rovezzi, all of whom have strong ties to Woolly and helped shepard me on my way there. Having just graduated, I was scared to be out of the classroom, but discovered I was surrounded by even more lessons to learn.

Dramaturgs are perpetual students by nature, but we can and should also be teachers, imparting our own unique knowledge and wisdom. During my fellowship at the O’Neill, I was mentored by Literary Manager, Helena Pennington, Artistic Associate, Rebecca Rovezzi, and Script Coordinator, Audrey Erickson. The three built a deeply intentional and robust scaffolding to keep us informed, prepared, and savvy. Training began, like most jobs do, with a period of intensity at the beginning of the summer, but it continued at a regular interval throughout the entire season. This primarily took the form of weekly salons where we discussed readings. These ranged from seminal theatre staples like “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet” to contemporary classics like Sarah Ruhl’s essay collection to O’Neill specific texts like Jeffrey Sweet’s book of the same name. Helena, Rebecca, and Audrey also created their own materials that laid bare best practices and expectations, leaving any guess work at the door. In true dramaturg fashion, they fostered our curiosity and met it with a surplus of new ideas to explore.

The last few months have challenged me, surprised me, and reassured me over and over. It’s not an easy time to be optimistic. Amidst the disruption of federal aid structures, the censoring of DEI initiatives, and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, hope is a very fragile thing. Despite the sociopolitical havoc we’re living through, I have found value and purpose in my creative practice. More than anything, these months have taught me that I can bring my full self wherever I go, and it can be seen as an asset, rather than a distraction. I’ve learned that my dramaturgy doesn’t exist separate from my own humanness, but because of it.