A baptismal record is a name, a date, a town. A scene is two people who arrived at that town for a reason. DRAMATURG holds the two together — every line on the page citing the record that put it there.
Dispatched this twelfth day of November. Granted to María Ignacia Ortega, widow, three sections fronting the irrigation ditch known as Acequia Madre. Witnessed by Juan de Dios Aragón, alcalde, and Padre Ramón Ortiz. The petitioner has worked these acres alone for six seasons since the death of her husband.
A wide field of cracked earth opens onto an irrigation ditch running with brown water. MARÍA IGNACIA ORTEGA, 39, walks the line of it slowly, dragging a hoe.[1]
A horse approaches from the road. JUAN DE DIOS ARAGÓN, 50s, dismounts. He carries a leather folio.[2]
JUAN DE DIOS
(removing his hat)
It is signed. Three sections. The padre witnessed.
She does not stop walking. She keeps her eyes on the ditch.
MARÍA IGNACIA
Six seasons.[3]
Every dramatic beat anchored in an archival record. The pipeline enforces it.
Semantic retrieval across the TRINIDAD archival corpus. Cluster by name, place, date.
Build a story graph. Characters become nodes. Records become edges. The graph is the source of truth.
Screenplay structure with provenance tagged to every line.
One scene. Three records. Every superscript a citation.
A single tallow candle burns on the table. MARÍA IGNACIA stands at the hearth stirring a clay pot. Her son TOMÁS, 11, sits on the floor mending a sandal.[1]
A knock. Three slow beats. She does not turn.
MARÍA IGNACIA
Tomás. The door.
The boy crosses. He opens it. PADRE RAMÓN ORTIZ stands in the dark. He carries a small ledger.[2]
PADRE RAMÓN
(quietly)
There is news from the alcalde.
She turns now. She wipes her hands on her apron. The candle moves with her breath.
MARÍA IGNACIA
Tell me.
PADRE RAMÓN
The grant is signed. Three sections. By the acequia.[3]
Long beat. The boy looks up from the sandal.
TOMÁS
Mamá?
She crosses to the boy. She kneels. She takes his face in both hands.
MARÍA IGNACIA
(to Tomás)
It is ours. It is finally ours.
Arrive with a question. Leave with a screenplay defensible in a footnote.
Time period, location, family name.
Characters, places, dates drawn from archival records. Confirm or revise before any prose is written.
Every action line and line of dialogue carries a footnote pointing to the record that made it possible.
FDX. JSON. PDF with footnotes. Pick your format.
A corpus structured for drama, with a paper trail attached.
Historical drama sourced from primary records. Pitch with provenance attached.
Read your archive in narrative form. Surface relationships the index missed.
From a parish ledger to a scene in one class period. History as named people.
Each CSR instrument owns one verb. DRAMATURG borrows from three.
Early access for working historians, filmmakers, and educators. Bring a corpus, a question, or just curiosity.