Prof. Michael Wright, Direktor des Studiengangs Creative Writing an der University of Tulsa, Oklahoma / USA kam im März nach Berlin. Für sein Forschungsprojekt „Play Development in Germany“ recherchierte er im Auftrag der Universität vor Ort.  Wir hatten für ihn einige Kontakte zu Expert_innen der Dramatik, des Theaters und des Szenischen Schreibens in Berlin eröffnet. Er interviewte u.a. Ulrich Hub, Kristo Šagor, Lars Werner, Nora Mansmann, Lutz Hübner und Kay Wuschek. Michael Wright war auch viele Jahre als Tutor für „World Interplay“, das Festival of Young Playwrights tätig. Hier sein erster Bericht:

„My visit to Berlin, to learn about playwriting practices in Germany, was a great success. Through the help of the team of Kinder- und Jugendtheaterzentrum in Frankfurt I was able to contact and interview a wide range of theatre artists. These ran the gamut from Lars Werner, on the threshold of a professional career, to the highly established playwright, Lutz Huebner. I met with people in coffee houses and rehearsal rooms, sometimes interviewing two subjects in one day, and three on the final day. It was quite a whirlwind tour.

The conversations with the nine practitioners I met with were open and very cordial. My questions had to do with process, by and large. I initially sought to discover whether there were standard methods utilized (for example, specific types of workshops or readings, such as can be found in certain U.S. programs) and found that there weren’t any particular means one could identify. Each playwright had his/her own methodology for bringing a new play to fruition that relied greatly on a sense of collaboration with directors and companies, and ultimately with the audience. The degree of this collaboration and the interchange among artists is clearly its own form of methodology and one that works very well.

All in all, the venture was a first-rate learning experience for me. It has not only expanded my world view about making theatre but reminded me that there are so very many similarities in the struggles we playwrights face to bring our work to life. We who make theatre are a very small tribe, indeed, and the German artists I met are certainly the best members of the tribe anyone could imagine.“

Henning Fangauf