Professor Christian Parker Expands Definition of Dramaturgy at Columbia University School of the Arts

In classes led by Professor of Professional Practice in Theatre Christian Parker ’98, students soon learn their first surprising lesson: as dramaturgs, they are expected to get creatively involved. They are not “meant to be sitting in the dark at the back waiting to offer harsh judgments on the work,” Parker explained over Zoom. Instead, he encourages his students to see themselves as “advocates for the project they're on, advocates for their collaborators, and generative artists in their own right.”

Parker, who serves as Head of the Dramaturgy concentration at Columbia University School of the Arts, sees the study of dramaturgy—which has been traditionally understood as the theory and practice of dramatic composition—as a multidisciplinary pursuit that helps students understand how all dimensions of theater production ultimately intersect in front of an audience. 

“It's really a study about how the sausage gets made,” Parker said. “What the students are building is a skill set about the mechanics of storytelling, and developing a vocabulary about how each of the other disciplines works and a set of interpersonal skills around how to collaborate with other people…both from the inside of the process and from a little bit of a critical distance.”

This open-ended approach leads students to pursue diverse career paths after the program. Alums of the past decade now direct the LaFon Arts Center in St Charles Parish, LA (Ned Moore '18); have become successful playwrights and screenwriters (Anchuli Felicia King '18); serve as fight choreographers on Broadway plays (Cha Ramos '21), and have gone into TV and film production (Hallie Sekoff '17).

Parker's approach represents an expansion of traditional dramaturgical training in the United States, which began in the 1970s and evolved to encompass a handful of programs around the country. Some dramaturgy programs have taken a more traditional approach to training students for legacy roles as literary managers and production dramaturgs. Columbia’s program seeks to expand students' notion of where and how their skill set can be applied, beyond being “a middle management engine of season programming, which is often the limit of what dramaturgy is assumed to be,” said Parker. 

Parker's own path to dramaturgy came through acting. During a pivotal summer experience in 1994 with teachers from the Moscow Art Theater, while working on plays by Anton Chekhov, Parker found himself drawn beyond his role as performer. He remembers the feeling of struggling to stay in his lane as he started to think about what else was happening in the room. “My mind kept going to, ‘Wait, what's that person doing? How is that working?’” What others might have seen as a director's impulse was actually something broader—a fascination with how stories come together in their entirety.

“I had a really strong impulse towards artistic leadership even before I really knew what that meant,” Parker recalled. After considering an MFA in acting, he found dramaturgy “accidentally” and made the decision to attend Columbia, drawn by the possibility of developing a broader skill set without closing other doors. “Learning this broader skill set, developing my collaborative ability with other people, wouldn't preclude my continuing to act or direct if I wanted to,” he remembers thinking, “but it might open up some other pathways for me in terms of leadership and placing theatre in a broader context.”

Ultimately, Parker became the Associate Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theater Company while producing, directing, and serving as dramaturg for over fifty premieres of new American and British plays on and off Broadway, including works by David Lindsay-Abaire, David Auburn, Cusi Cram, Keith Reddin, and Dael Orlandersmith, among others. 

In his teaching, Parker emphasizes that a dramaturg's abilities go beyond academic training. “Their greatest assets as professionals and artists is not the critical side, which can be learned, but what they bring in terms of their generosity, their curiosity, their personality, and their humor,” he said. He wants students to understand that being called a dramaturg doesn't mean they must have the final word. “If you get married to your opinion, you're not going to be able to really fully explore the depths of your own imagination.”

According to Parker, the dramaturg’s collaborative mindset has become especially vital as theatre faces new challenges in an increasingly mediated world, one in which we rely on all kinds of devices and translation layers (cellphones, messaging apps, video calls, etc.)  to communicate with others. “One of the things that's most powerful about theatre is the degree to which it is relatively unmediated,” Parker says. “When you're sitting in a room with live bodies...there's a direct exchange of energy and ideas and emotions. That can't exist without the full presence of both actors and audience.”

Parker sees particular promise in how current students might reinvent theatre’s direct connection with audiences. Coming from a generation accustomed to that heavily mediated communication from early on in their lives, they bring fresh perspectives to theatre’s enduring power. “I’m interested to see what it means for my students' generation to kind of claim this unmediated form...and to reinvent what that art of resonance, as my colleague [Professor] Anne Bogart says, is between people in a space.”

The challenges of maintaining focus in our tech-saturated world do not escape Parker’s attention. “Rehearsing a play really requires a kind of attention and presence in a room where you’re not constantly looking at your phone or dealing with your outside life,” he observed. Yet he’s seeing encouraging signs in his classroom: “I’ve noticed more often students not having computers or other devices open in class, taking notes with a pen and paper, just sitting and connecting with one another around a table... There’s sort of a natural impulse to focus on each other that at least maybe is coming back around.”

While acknowledging theatre's challenges—from attention spans shaped by technology to increasing production costs—Parker remains optimistic about the medium’s future. “People are always making pronouncements about the theatre dying, but it hasn't died. You know, it hasn't died in a couple thousand years.” For Parker, theatre’s endurance comes down to its essential purpose: “It's not about us actually at the end of the day—it's about trying to forge a connection with strangers in the dark.”

Christian Parker has worked extensively across American theatre, including collaborations with Sundance Theatre Institute, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. He has directed and dramaturged works by renowned playwrights including David Hare, Thornton Wilder, and David Lindsay-Abaire, and served on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee from 2014-2017. His recent credits include David Hare's Skylight at Gulfshore Playhouse and Lynn's My Heart is a Library, Yours is a Museum for New Harmony Project. Upcoming projects include works at Bucks County Playhouse and directing and producing the world premiere of a new play by Kirk Lynn in the 2025-26 season. 

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Interviewed by Cristóbal Riego, Creative Writing MFA Candidate at Columbia University School of the Arts, as a part of the This is Who We Are series. Published November 22, 2024.

About Columbia University School of the Arts Theatre MFA

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