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I wrote this article during my internship with Concord Theatricals to tie in two of my loves: theatre & environmental science! It's an example of marketing copy, directed toward their readership about licensing plays.

ARTICLE FOR THE LMDA BULLETIN

In addition to working as a Co-Editor for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas' monthly Bulletin newsletter, I had the chance to add my creative and critical writing skills to the mix as the Featured Article in the March 2023 edition of the Bulletin. I've included it below. Happy reading!

Drawn to Nature: On Dramaturgical Landscapes by Ally Varitek

I think Beatrix Potter was dramaturgical.

The Beatrix Potter to whom I refer is the British writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist: a multi-hyphenate, like so many of us who work within the landscape of dramaturgy.
Perhaps this sentiment is at the forefront of my mind because Potter features heavily in my own dramaturgical landscape… at least, the literal corner of my room from where I do dramaturgy. This corner has become a dramaturgical landscape of its own.
I have adopted a habit over the past two years of collecting that resulted in this corner. Actually, I’ve always been a collector, from when I was a toddler, where I would stick neat-looking rocks into my pockets, only to forget they were there and leave them for my patient mother to discover after an awful noise would ring through the house upon the start of the washer and dryer. Those collecting quirks, unbeknownst to me, were the first signs that I was a dramaturg. Back to Beatrix…

Over the past two years, I’ve adopted this habit of collecting visual reminders of art and words that inspire me. This means plastered across my wall is a conglomeration of the postcards from art I’ve loved at museums, quotes from wordsmiths scrawled on scrap pieces of paper, newspaper articles, and show programs from works that still sit with me. In the left corner of the lower side lies a watercolor done by Beatrix Potter, and, looking down from the top right corner, the conservationist herself taking her beloved rabbit for a walk.

I collected these reminders of Beatrix Potter after seeing her “Drawn to Nature” exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London last summer. I’d always known her for the cute animal narratives of my childhood, but her story outside of her writing captivated me most of all. This collection barely focused on the beloved characters like Peter Rabbit and Jemima Duck. Instead, an entire opening room was devoted to her childhood love of science and species. Potter grew up frequently visiting both

Scotland and the Lake District and over the years curated and documented the landscapes she so loved. Be it watercolor paintings or intricate scientific drawings of specimens, she was enraptured in love for these landscapes, from the widest meadow to the tiniest fungi. I would even argue that the thumbprints of her childhood love of landscapes can be seen in all aspects of her work, from the scientific drawings to even the Tales of Peter Rabbit. She, like a young Ally with rocks, expressed a curational curiosity for the smallest of things.

It is part of that awareness of her environment, of necessary parts that make our landscapes possible and beautiful and real, that seems dramaturgical to me. I think all dramaturgs hold this trait of a “curatorial consciousness” in us always. Yes, it starts perhaps as an affinity for curating or collecting—be it mushrooms or rocks or songs we love to hear—but I think the mark of the dramaturg is how that consciousness grows in response to its natural environment.

The latter end of the “Drawn to Nature” exhibit featured the less-documented final chapters of Potter’s life. Having made a comfortable living with the Peter Rabbit books, Potter was able to return to her beloved Lake District, where she purchased her own farm to not just live but once again be immersed in the Lake District's landscapes. While there, her consciousness for the landscape around her led Beatrix to notice a sharp decline in the Herdwick sheep population. Her attention to detail, this keen interest in conversation and keeping the landscape around her healthy, meant Potter felt it right to take matters into her own hands and, by her own efforts, nurse and breed the Herdwick sheep population back to health.

Potter had a curatorial consciousness to recognize this one species was integral to the living ecosystem of the land she so loved, but she also acted dramaturgically in that this consciousness led her to an actionable kind of empathy. She, quite literally, became a shepherd of the landscape she so loved.

Our role as shepherds of stories relies on both this curatorial consciousness and the power and willingness to do something about it. As dramaturgs, our empathy must be actionable for these stories to grow, to heal, to reach, and to resonate.

What does this mean for us? I think it means we can take notes from Potter’s notebooks. I think it means we can pay minute detail to the minutiae. We should keep reminders of the landscapes we want to work in: equitable, empathetic, connectable, challenging, and even at times raw. We should familiarize ourselves with how each seed of a story needs different conditions to grow or reach its Potters, and we should be humbled by the beauty in that diversity. Every soil, every landscape, needs diversity, but it also needs keen attention to its intricacies and needs. It’s beautiful that we all resonate with different kinds of stories and themes as dramaturgs. Our community, our landscape, is robust and flourishes because of these differences. I think, like Beatrix Potter, we should use this consciousness to create, document, and curate the stories we know and love as well as the ones we know we need. It also means we must be aware enough to recognize when a story may need a shepherd’s hands. We must be willing to be actionable in conserving its place in our ecosystem.

I quite look up to Beatrix Potter, humbly fostering a curatorial consciousness and actionable empathy toward the stewardship of the landscapes we live, grow, and die in. I hope she knew she was dramaturgical, too.