Noah Lena Vercauteren MA

PhD Candidate

Cohort/Start PhD: 2025-2026

The position and role of the institutional dramaturg. An interdisciplinary analysis of institutional dramaturgy in Flemish and Dutch city-theatres

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH)
Duration of appointment: 01/11/2023 – 31/10/2027
Supervisors: Prof Christel Stalpaert (UGent), Prof Henk Roose (UGent), Prof Kati Röttger (UvA), Dr Kasia Lech (UvA)
Name of faculty: Faculty of Literature and Philosophy (UGent), Faculty of Humanities (UvA)
Chair group: Art history, musicology and theatre studies (UGent), Theatre Studies (UvA)

This research seeks to uncover the current positions and practices of an institutional dramaturg at Flemish-Dutch city-theatres. From the current academic and non-academic discourse within institutional critique and within dramaturgy, there arise certain questions on how the inherent fluidity of a dramaturg can function within a rigid institutional structure. This friction unfolds itself specifically in the context of institutional dramaturgy within city-theatres. Traditionally, until the last two decades, the work of an institutional dramaturg in Europe has been located in theatre institutions. Increasingly this work is breaking out of institutional spaces and into fluid forms of working. This evolution, interestingly, can actually be observed in Flanders and the Netherlands as early as the ‘60s, resulting in a different evolution of the function of the dramaturg, distinct from the French-German dramaturgical tradition. However, how this has evolved in the Flemish-Dutch field and how it can be observed in institutional dramaturgy today has not been extensively studied. This study seeks to uncover the evolution of dramaturgy, both as a profession and as artistic work, in Flemish and Dutch institutions and how its function is defined today in city-theatres, with its various limits and possibilities within institutional structures and as institutional critique. The result will be a deeper understanding of the practices of institutional dramaturgs, why they are used and how they have come to be.