After-Dinner Thoughts of America's Oldest Living Dramaturg

Abstract

Arthur Ballet was a dramaturg in America before the English-language theatre really knew that such a theatrical functionary had long been leading a curious backstairs life in the theatres of central Europe. He directed and taught theatre at the University of Minneapolis for many years until, in 1961, he became Director there of the grandly-entitled Office for Advanced Drama Research – in which capacity he not only gave unstintingly of time and advice to hundreds of aspirant playwrights, but guided their work towards likely outlets, and selected and edited no fewer than thirteen volumes of new work in the Playwrights for Tomorrow series. He was also a regular dramaturg for the O'Neill Playwrights' Conference, and later served in that role at the Guthrie Theatre. During the Carter years Arthur Ballet was director of the theatre programme for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1975 he became an advisory editor of Theatre Quarterly, as he has been of NTQ from our first issue. What follows is an after-dinner speech made to an association whose very existence would have seemed an improbability just a few decades ago – the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, to whom he here addresses some words of practical advice and cautionary wisdom.