Behind the Yellow Wallpaper: A Dramaturg’s Perspective

by Tanya Dean, dramaturg of The Yellow Wallpaper

“The ‘conversation starter’ of the production process,” was how Aoife (Spillane-Hinks, director of The Yellow Wallpaper and one half of the founding forces of Then This Theatre) nutshelled the role of the dramaturg for this show. So that seems like a fine place to begin explaining my role in this production...

Starting the conversation…

Back in March when Aoife first approached me about working on a new adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s gothic novella, The Yellow Wallpaper, we chatted about how a dramaturg could best serve this particular and peculiar production. “Dramaturg” is a hazy job title, one that lies somewhere in the nexus between researcher, consultant, and critic. No two shows are the same, so the role of dramaturg shifts according to the needs of each specific production. My personal favourite analogy is that if the actors, directors, playwrights, designers, etc. are the builders of a play-world, then the dramaturg serves as the mapmaker. It’s my job to help discover uncharted territory, to explain strange new lands, and to gently but firmly guide fellow travellers safely past areas marked “here there be monsters.” For The Yellow Wallpaper, we decided, this “theatrical cartography” would take the form of research relating to the subject matter and context of the piece, on the adaptation of the text itself from a literary to a performance medium, and on the rendering of the piece in all its elements (design, performance, mise-en-scène, etc.). 

Drawing a Map…

Some aspects of dramaturging require a meticulous, almost clerical eye for detail. Like taking eight different editions of the text (including the author’s original 1890 manuscript, thank you Schlesinger Library!) and literally going through line-by-line, looking for editorial differences. I nearly went cross-eyed by the time I got to the last page, but from this, I was able to draw up a master text of The Yellow Wallpaper, which now serves as the basis for our adaptation. As part of the adaptation process, sometimes this means deciding between a differing word choice (“one expects that in marriage” versus “one expects that in men.”) Sometimes it means deciding on whether or not to include lines that CPG wrote in her original manuscript, but that were omitted from the 1892 published version (“A sickly penetrating suggestive yellow.”) Sometimes it can be as simple as the difference between punctuation (“I am glad my case is not serious!” versus “I am glad my case is not serious.”) It may sound like fiddly work, but these tiny details can make a big difference in the nuance of this woman’s story.

Plotting a path…

Then we come to the exploration of the play-world. Perkins-Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper at the end of the 19^th century, a time of sweeping social, cultural, and political change. In order to better illuminate the world that CPG was writing from and that our protagonist is living in, I buried myself in the library for a few weeks and pulled together what’s known as a “dramaturgy packet.” This is like a reference book for a production; the basic elements are a glossary, an author bio, and a chronology for the time in which the piece was written. For YWP, I also included short informational essays on elements like America in the 19^th century, women in the 19^th century, and the Weir Mitchell Rest Cure for neurasthenia. From this, we were able to get into deeper conversations about things like what would be expected of our protagonist as a wife and mother, where would she stand socially, how would fashions and medical ideas of the time affect her physically and mentally. Slowly but surely, we began to develop a clearer understanding of the world that this woman lives in.

What lies beneath…

Now, we’re at the table-work stage, where the director, cast, and dramaturg talk though the script line-by-line, trying to dig a little deeper under the surface of the text. I’ll confess, table-work is probably my favourite part of the rehearsal process; it’s like watching the lights come on and suddenly the play comes into clearer focus. You begin to discover revelations and meanings that you never saw before, no matter how many times you may have read the script. A world begins to emerge…