Search Results - Bly, Mark

Mark Bly

Mark Bly (born 1949) is an American dramaturge, educator, and author. After graduating from Yale's Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program in 1980, Bly worked as a resident dramaturge – then a relatively new position in the United States. He held this position for several of the country's major regional theaters: the Guthrie, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, and the Alley. He was the first dramaturge to receive a Broadway dramaturgy credit for his collaboration with director Emily Mann on her play ''Execution of Justice'' (1986), During his career, Bly worked as a production dramaturge with a series of major theater artists including Doug Hughes, Garland Wright, Emily Mann and Moisés Kaufman, as well as on the world premieres of works by playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl and Rajiv Joseph.

In 1992, Bly returned to the Yale School of Drama to teach playwriting and dramaturgy. As a teacher and author, he rejected narrow definitions of the dramaturge's role in the theatre-making process, arguing for dramaturgy as an active, open, and, most of all, deeply-informed application of "The Questioning Spirit" (''i.e.'', commitment to "an environment where everyone is free to ask questions" and "curiosity is at a premium") to the creative process.

In addition to editing and contributing to ''Yale Theater: American Production Dramaturgs'' (1986), a collection of interviews with the first generation of American dramaturges, Bly assembled and edited two volumes of his ''Production Notebooks: Theater in Process'' (1996, 2001) – the first set of dramaturgy case studies published in North America. Bly's later writings include ''New Dramaturgies: Strategies and Exercises for 21st Century Playwriting'' (2019), a book detailing techniques for teaching playwriting created by Bly for his students at Yale.

Bly's production dramaturgy, teaching, and writing have led others to regard him as a major influence in the emergence of dramaturgy as a field and profession in contemporary American theater. Provided by Wikipedia