As a response to the damage the Covid-19 pandemic has caused in the theatre world, the Dramaturgs’ Network (a volunteer arts organization, based in the UK) has launched a new project: Invisible Diaries, an online journal, written by dramaturgs.

Starting on 7 April 2020, for twelve weeks, every week a different dramaturg writes the journal for seven days, which is then published daily on the Dramaturgs’ Network’s website’s Blog.

The aim was to give a platform to dramaturgs, ‘the invisible people of the theatre-making process’, so the wider public can discover the people behind the role, and perhaps learn more about dramaturgy, whilst finding out how these highly skilled theatre professionals are coping during the period of the pandemic in the UK and beyond.

As the curator of the series, I am grateful to the authors for all their contributions, and that they have managed to find the time and energy, whilst coping with an unprecedented situation, to put their thoughts and feelings down for seven days. I appreciate that they accepted the challenge of opening up and showing the personality of a theatre professional who is usually sitting quietly in the corner of a rehearsal room, observing the unfolding events around them.

Another essential ingredient to this project is the dedicated team of editors, Tommo Fowler, Miranda Laurence, and Sarah Sigal, whose professionalism made it possible to publish 84 essays in as many days.

What started as a playful activity to engage with each other during the lockdown, as the weeks went by, grew out to be an important conversation, hence the decision to give it an even wider platform.

Here, on the portal of The Theatre Times, we are re-publishing a selection of these journal entries in the hope that the reflections of these dramaturgs might contribute to a dialogue about the future of theatre – an essential conversation to be had for the time when we emerge from the quarantine and start to rebuild the theatre scene.

This blog entry appeared in Dramaturgs’ Network on April 6th, 2020, and has been reposted with permission.

This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.

This post was written by Katalin Trencsényi.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.