A Conversation with Dramaturg Rosie Kellagher

A good dramaturg can transform how you think of a story. The Artist Paul Klee said "Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible.” I've worked with Rosie Kellagher, the dramaturg at the National Theatre of Scotland, a number of times and I think this is what she does. She makes the invisible, visible.

In this post, Rosie discusses some of the models she uses to look at a story. They are from different disciplines— tools for different jobs — whether that is psychology or an understand of mythic archetypes. 

I’ll also go over some of the key questions Rosie asks of a script, and common problems she sees surface during the script development process.

What a dramaturg does appears from the outside as some kind of magic at times. They have to set up a thinking environment for the writer and hold a space for the conversation to take place. They are part-coach, expert in manipulating story, holding it up to the light and looking at it from various angles and changing the light around it so you see invisible connections.

On Writing Compelling Present Action 

Rosie says that compelling present action is a huge part of the craft and that it can often be often missed out in writing workshops and introductions to Playwriting in favour of character creation.  

I think, for me, a key question to ask when developing drama is not just what happens but also why does it happen and ultimately, how are we going to see the chain of cause and effect between the actions that unfold on the stage? - i.e. how do the actions of the characters in scene one lead to the further actions of the characters, and the events these cause, in scene three etc. etc.

She says, given that character is most compellingly revealed through action, that "when a character is without a chain of action they are often neutered and can be redundant in the drama.”

Transactional Analysis as a Dramaturgical Frame

When it comes to crafting subtext and understanding what underpins how characters communicate with each other, Rosie suggests the theory of transactional analysis (TA) as a framework.  

Transactional Analysis a form of psychoanalysis in which the interactions between people are studied in order to understand their behaviour. 

TA was first outlined by Eric Berne in the ’50s. Worth noting that Rosie doesn’t suggest using Eric Berne’s writing on the subject as some of the language is very dated, with sexist and prejudical language used in some examples.  The field has moved on significantly since Berne's work and it is widely used in psychoanalysis today.  

EBSCO (an incredible resource for writers), has an entry on Transactional Analysis. This definition is from the EBSCO article.

It focuses on understanding personality and social interactions through the concept of ego states, consisting of the "parent," "adult," and "child." Each state represents different aspects of human behavior and emotional responses, influencing how individuals interact with one another….(Rentz, 2024)

A transaction happens when a person responds to the behaviour of another person. They're called "complementary" when two people interact from complementary ego states. They are called "crossed transactions" when two people are in incompatible ego states. Rosie says:

The concept has probably been most useful to me when developing naturalistic drama but I think there are useful things in there for character creation and development more broadly.  It's certainly been something I've used with actors and writers in workshops and in rehearsals.

Here is one concept connected to Transactional Analysis - that of "life scripts". These life scripts are created through repetitive interactions when one is young. They emerge through repetitive interactions with one’s early environment - gradually cutting paths for themselves, scripts on what to expect from the world, or from others.

A script resembles an actor’s role in a drama. An important outcome of one’s early scripting is the basic decision one makes about one’s existential position. Specifically, the basic identity becomes constellated around feelings of being either okay (free child) or not okay (adapted child).(Rentz, 2024)

Disney’s Storytelling

When working with emerging writers, Rosie often finds herself using references to Disney's storytelling as a shortcut to explaining story development and the centrality of action in drama.   

Of course, it can be hugely formulaic, but it's a useful reference point because almost everyone has some level of familiarity with it! 

Disney stories have incredibly deep roots. Disney drew on the work of (among others) the Grimm Brothers, who themselves altered the original stories. Disney of course made them much sweeter, but there are much older (and weirder) versions recorded. 

There is one Gaelic version of Snow White (called Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree) which the polymath John Francis Campell thought evolved from a much older version. It contains animistic elements and has a lack of Christian imagery. 

The Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) Index is used to classify folktale types, surfacing narrative patterns across languages. It's worth having a look at and also looking at motifs which surface in stories across languages.

Rosie says "Essentially, it's just a distillation of Joseph Campbell which is another book I can always return to."

The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell published his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949. It lays out his concept of the monomyth, using examples to show how the same narrative structure appears across cultures. Campbell called this narrative structure “The Hero’s Journey”. 

The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the mono-myth. (Campbell, 2008, p. 23)

Joseph Campbell’s work on myth, especially the hero’s journey, has had an enormous influence on story-telling. George Lucas using it as inspiration for Star Wars is possibly the most commonly referenced example.

I talked to one academic who was dismissive of Campbell’s work, so bear in mind that there is debate about it. But as a writer, it’s essential to know Campbell’s work. 

I wrote a post called The Behaviour Formula - Neuroscience and the Creation of Myth - which goes deeper into this subject. 

A hugely helpful resource Rosie also recomments is The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy.

Interrogating a Story Idea

Here are some notes from a writing workshop I took part in, led by Rosie.
The purpose of the workshop was to interrogate a story idea.

Rosie made the point that Literary Agents and Dramaturgs can have different approaches, but that similar questions come up.  Going through a script development process, sometimes a writer is offered direct advice, but mainly it's an interrogration. In the following, it’s worth noting aspects of the process which overlap with a coaching approach to developing a script. 

If using this for a workshop, please credit Rosie Kellagher. 

First I’ll talk about the shape of the workshop and then I’ll list the twelve questions that are being asked of the script. 

Everyone should have a shape to their idea, so that they can tell it to another person. (So people will be working in pairs.)

Initially ten minutes are spent where everyone thinks about their stories in relation to the twelve questions listed below. 

The questions also help frame the listener’s thinking when the writer is telling them about their story. The order is:

• The writer talks about the piece with no interruptions. 
• The listener says everything they can, their impressions, about the piece. 
• The listener then asks questions (and only questions) which the writer responds to.
• Both the writer and listener can then have a conversation about the piece.

The Twelve Questions

The twelve questions are:

• What’s it about? This is a question about theme. Examples of Themes/ Topics include Love, Justice/Injustice, Family, Struggle, the American Dream, Wealth, Inhumanity...)
• What happens i.e. the story?
• When does the story start? i.e. when does the audience join it?
• What's at stake i.e. why does it matter?
• What's the one line pitch?
• What's the call to adventure?
• What's the inciting incident?
• What's the question of the piece?
• How do the audience feel as they leave?
• Who are the audience?
• If narrative drama - whose story, what do they want, what do they need, what's the conflict?
• For particular scenes, you can ask, what's the question of this scene?

It’s amazing what comes up during this process. It really makes you think of the complex system that is your story. The final part of the process is to spend time thinking about the following list of common problems that often surface during the script development process.

Common Story Problems

Here are some other things to be aware of, common problems which arise during the script development process. Although books about writing sometimes give us the impression that writing a story is a linear process, I feel it is more like a complex system - highly interconnected, non-linear and unpredictable.

• There is a lack of present action i.e. something which someone says, which changes the course of the play. 
• Characters telling stuff to each other that they already know.
• The play focusses on discussions of past events. ie little at stake.
• Characters argue some point repeatedly without anything they're saying making them change.
• An under-developed theme or the theme only applies to one character.
• No resonance to the wider theme in the play i.e. the writing name-drops the theme but doesn't go into depth.
• A character expounds on an idea which doesn't have any bearing on events.

Interrogating a story in this way is a really powerful tool. I’d like to thank Rosie for sharing her expertise with us. 

Read other conversations with writers David Greig and Stephen Greenhorn, and with dramaturg Katherine Mendelsohn.