Dramaturgical Resources
2022
Fellowship
By Sam Chanse
Over the course of the season, our assistant directors and student dramaturgs will be compiling dramaturgical resources relating to each production as it develops. Below are some links to websites which relate to the history of the play, the biography of the playwright, and sites that contextualize and, we hope, shed light on the directorial approach to the dramatic material.
We hope you find these resources of interest.
(Sam Chanse, b. )
Fellowship is a new work by playwright, Sam Chanse, an Asian-American writer and current resident playwright at New Dramatists. She is also a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and a past fellow at MacDowell, Cherry Lane, Sundance Theatre Institute, and Playwrights Realm. Chanse is also an educator, having taught writing and playwriting at Columbia University, NYU, and the University of Rochester. Her work encompasses plays, musicals, and other kinds of theatrical work. Previous productions include Monument, Or Four Sisters (A Sloth Play),Fruiting Bodies, The Opportunities of Extinction, Trigger, and The Other Instinct.
Fellowship, like her other work, reflects Chanse’s concerns as a playwright, as detailed on her website. There, she speaks about what she calls “unfiguroutables,” thorny or multi-faceted thematic questions that explore race, gender, identity, and politics. Her writing seeks to transform and challenge the initial ideas of an audience, giving them further understanding and empathy of situations that might seem different and first glance, and revealing what was once hidden from plain view. Such revelations are major turning points in her plays, exposing the true intentions and identities of her characters. This has a lot to do with her focus on authenticity in identity, reflected by her own, personal struggles in fitting into checkboxes relating to her own racial identity.
The core of Fellowship is a group of student activists and fellowsof a social justice organization who work and live together to combat the pernicious effects of a ballot proposition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition). The work explores the different dynamics that form within the group as they slowly get to know each other, and how the history and hierarchy of the organization affects the relationships of fellows to their work, each other, and to their own sense of identity, privilege, and justice.