Sonoma Valley library hosts ‘Emma’ talk

“The word ‘dramaturg’ does trip people up,” says Mary-Kay Gamel, who prefers to pronounce the word so that the final syllable rhymes with “burg,” and not “urge,” though she admits both are technically acceptable. “I prefer it with the hard ‘g’ because otherwise it sounds too much like ‘turgid,’ which is something else entirely.”

Well, now that the word’s pronunciation has been sorted out, Gamel – currently serving as dramaturg for Sonoma Arts Live – gives its official definition.

“A dramaturg is someone who works on a drama, in various ways,” she says, excluding the jobs of director, actor, choreographer, etc. “A dramaturg is a scholar, someone who knows the history of a play, and the various situations discussed or represented in the play. A dramaturg gives advice to the artists about the script, and various choices they might be making. On occasion, they write something about the play, for the audience’s benefit, or perhaps gives a talk about the play before or after the show.”

To that end, as dramaturg for Sonoma Arts Live, Gamel is now presenting a new monthly series of talks at the Sonoma Valley Library, each one designed to elucidate a different play being presented that month by the theater company.

On March 1, she’ll be discussing the upcoming production of “Emma: A Pop Musical,” a modernized adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Emma.”

“It’s a wonderful show, with lots of music,” Gamel says, “and I’m happy to say that it’s short, which is not the case with the novel. I’ve been revisiting ‘Emma,’ the original Austen book, and it’s 450 pages long. There’s so much dialogue. But it’s wonderful, of course, you just wouldn’t want to put it all on stage. You’d be there for hours.”

Gamel, now of Sonoma, is the Research Professor Emeritus of Classics, Comparative Literature, and Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz, where she’s taught the classics and developed a number of her own stage adaptations of ancient Greek plays. She is the author of “Ancient Mediterranean Women in Modern Mass Media,” and co-author of the anthology, “Women on Edge: Four Plays by Euripides.”

During her March 1 library talk – which will last just one hour, she promises – Gamel will discuss Austen’s original novel, give a brief overview of the story, and talk about Austen’s various ideas about happiness and love.

“The overall idea is that Emma wants to make people happy,” she says. “She wants to arrange their lives, and play the matchmaker for her friends, but she makes plenty of mistakes along the way – mistakes that have an unpredictable effect on her own life.”