The Secret Garden Dramaturgy Project Blog Post #1: This Is Just the Beginning!

I had heard of dramaturgs before, but I was never really sure exactly what the position entailed. I knew it had something to do with doing a lot of writing on a show, but I didn't realize the extent of the position before I began this project. Needless to say, I learned pretty quick how much work and research a dramaturg has to do.

The show I'm acting as the dramaturg for is OSU Theatre's Winter Main Stage production of The Secret Garden, a musical written by Marsha Norman (script and lyrics) and Lucy Simon (music), based on the book of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. At OSU, the show is being directed by Anthony Eversole of the OSU Music department, and featured actors and actresses from both the Theatre and Music major programs.

A dramaturg's role is to research the show and become a consultant for the director, designers, costumers, cast, crew, and really anyone else involved in the production on matters related to the show's central themes, historical context, elements related to the director's conceptual approach for the show, and other related things. This means that my job was mostly to do as much research as I could on the show and then share it with all those who were involved with the show.

The first thing I had to do before the majority of my research was a little costume research for our department's costumer, DeMara Cabrera. Specifically, DeMara wanted to know about "Military uniforms of that period [early 20th century, specifically 1911], in India — specifically, the different means of distinguishing rank," "Undergarments of the period for young women (England)," and "information on traditional Indian attire for women in the era."  This turned out to be a pretty big learning experience for me in terms of how to find really accurate sources. The first couple times I researched this information for DeMara, I ended up sending her info that was inaccurate for the time period or was otherwise unreliable. After the first couple tries, I actually found what she was looking for.

Here's a few of the accurate images of the aforementioned costuming-related subjects that I ended up using in my presentation:

British Colonial Military uniforms in 1911




British Colonial Military rank insignias in 1911



English women's undergarments in 1911



Indian women's attire in 1911

After having to re-do this research a few times, I realized how seriously one needs to take this research. There is a LOT of Google Image results from sites like Pinterest or Imgur that are just too unverifiable in origin to be appropriately used for true scholarly research. The same thing goes for the websites I could list as sources that I found using normal Google searches; many of them are published by random people who's credibility cannot always be verified. A lot of them look very professionally made, or use language and rhetoric that sounds very academic, so they may seem legitimate at first glance. However, on closer inspection, the information on a lot of these sources was just too unverifiable to be used in my research. Although this was a hiccup on my part, I'm glad that it at least happened very early on in the process, before most of my other research.

Not long after doing that research for DeMara, Anthony sent me a list of subjects that he was interested in having me research for the show. Specifically, the topics he wanted me to research were:

1. Mary and Colin’s transformations.
2. The "Christian Science” and “New Thought" underpinnings that are present in the source material. The ideology that positive thought is a cure-all for physical ailments is prevalent in the story.
3. The racist undertones of the source material. What does India and the Indian characters represent in the story? What does Yorkshire and Whiteness represent? How (if at all) did the musical’s creative team push back against that racism?
4. The elements of mental health present in the story; Archibald’s depression. What does it cause him to do? What decisions does he make because of it? 
5. The sexism of the novel, referring to Colin as being “hysterical," and specifically the Freudian elements of this concept that feminize him.
6. The opposition of India to the manor house to the garden. What does each locale represent?
7. Themes of haunting and the occult (vs simply issues of mental health representing the hauntings?) Specifically, how they are presented in the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, as the themes of trauma and mental health vs the occult in that show were very similar to Anthony's take on the production of The Secret Garden.
8. The necessity of human companionship
9. The effect of the landscape on human transformation and healing
10. Secrets
11. The sixth Cholera epidemic, and how it affects the characters (especially its effect on Colonial India).
12. British Colonialism and its effect of Indian native culture. Slavery vs. Indentured servitude vs. “employment” — where does it fall on the spectrum?
13. The impact of neglect on children, and, more specifically, how Mary and Colin both suffer from it
14. How the additions to the story by the musical's creative team (ie the Archie/Neville/Lily love triangle; Neville’s desire to take over the manor, etc) impact the story.
15. Class differences (Yorkshire natives vs Manor inhabitants/Indian natives vs British Colonists)

Obviously, this list is fairly extensive, however I found in my research that a lot of these topics and themes shared a lot of overlap, and that helped with a large part of my research. In fact, in approaching this research, I developed a pretty strong thesis that I think ties a lot of these threads together: "The Secret Garden is an rejuvenating transformation from fragile dependency into exuberant self-liberation."

When I presented to the cast, I made slides for all the research that I had done up to that point on all of these topics, but I also understood that my work would not end there. There was a lot more research that I could do on these subjects and other things related to the show. I'll share a lot more of that research (as well as my full, actual Dramaturgy analysis itself) in one of my future posts here on this blog. But, I think that's enough for my introductory post anyway!