Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - 'The Patron Saint of Dramaturgs'

"Dramaturgy is the concern with composition, structure, staging and audience from literary analysis and historiography"

- G E Lessing, The Hamburg Dramaturgy, 1767-69.

Today is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 283rd birthday so, to celebrate, I've 'scribbled' some thoughts.

If you take the word of Edward Kemp, former NT Associate Director and RSC Dramaturg - plus the current Artistic Director at RADA, then Lessing is the stand-out candidate for the Patron Saint of Dramaturgs. His brief tenure as In-House Critic and Playwright in Hamburg between 1767 and 1769 was the first establishment in a modern western theatre of the practise of the dramaturg and, though Lessing's writings, we get some short glimpse of what he intended the role to be and what he never succeeded in fulfilling himself - though arguably Lessing students, including Schiller, Goethe and, to a lesser extent, Büchner did create the National Theatre of Germany that was intended by Lessing's work. 

Lessing was a literary product of his time: an essay writer and polemicist arguing the toss for whichever side, a ployglot speaking English, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew and a talented playwright writing "the first long-running German comedy, the first bourgeois tragedy, and in Nathan The Wise created one of the most significant dramatic works of the European Enlightenment." (Kemp)

However it was only after training as a doctor, and to the displeasure of his Lutheran father, that Lessing embarked on a career in the arts. I will digress here to one of my favourite quotations for one of my favourite writers.

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts"

- Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Lessing role was to create a National Theatre for Germany (this more as a body of work and concepts rather than a building like the concrete edifice on the Southbank - and 'Germany' didn't really exist then but brush over that), encourage discipline, professionalism and literary knowledge in actors, nurture theatrical promise and further the education of audiences.

His creative and critical capacity in this new National Theatre was what has now become known as dramaturgy under similar umbrella principles (although I'd never say I've made actors more disciplined...) and the term itself arising from Lessing's serialised publication on his role: Hamburgische Dramaturgie.

Lessing's hope was to cover and document the creative process of German Romantic theatre-making and put out a discourse on the role he played within the system. He would discuss work, classic plays and give text lectures via the publication. However this was cut short by Lessing's not keeping track of productions in rehearsal and the suspension of the Dramaturgie's serial distribution.

Lessing's work at promoting a new German language theatre was not an instant success either. During his tenure at the National Theatre 308 performances in French to only 176 in German doesn't speak of a great change in direction. However, Lessing was more pragmatic.  He was one of the first great German champions of Shakespeare and loved French and Italian theatre (he joked that he would like to become the German Molière). Whilst this bucked against his role in developing a new German national theatre, he had the foresight to see that imports can be in the expression of that same new theatre (Goethe, you assume, read Marlowe, Brecht had a predilection for adapting restoration comedy, Müller's HamletMachine).

Lessing was also known to prevaricate from some of his set duties and harp on about pet projects (such as ancient sources for the works of Voltaire) in his Dramaturgie publication. As he says "Am I still harping on! Truly, I pity the readers who had hopes of a theatre newspaper in these pages one rich and varied, entertaining and droll... Instead they are getting lengthy, serious and turgid criticism of old familiar plays"

However, all this has made me consider Lessing's legacy today. In this respect the blogosphere and twitter have made the documenting of performance making and practise  an easy and accessible tool for the thoroughly modern dramaturg. Indeed, one dramaturg, who I greatly respect, does it already - Michael Pinchbeck's Making The End*

Equally, with German playwrights such as Marius von Mayenburg, David Gieselmann, Moritz Rinke and Katharina Gericke performing work in the UK and Simon Stephens or Mark Ravenhill having often more profile with our Saxon neighbours then Lessing's encouragement of imports alongside the creation of a new German theatre doesn't look a foolish venture.

I can't speak with any certainty on the drive of Germany's actors or the education of their audiences but the German playgoing public, from what I've read, tend to like more stuff I like than the A level set text and Wilde-Coward standards of most regional theatres.

Finally, I feel that Lessing deserves more than a passing footnote in modern theatre teaching (the same true of the next blog posting on William Archer) as he did start, perhaps unknowingly and to use Mary Luckhurst's phrase, a revolution in theatre.

Rough Bibliography
Edward Kemp - 'Lessing's Humanity'

Mary Luckhurst - Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre

Cathy Turner and Synne K. Behrndt - Dramaturgy and Performance

* I will point out that Ollie Smith is hugely involved  in the making of The End as he may get offended if not mentioned and not watch the Snooker with me later or help with the washing-up. The domestic lives of theatre-makers.....