Update 5 November 2021: props too to the brilliant Jo Clifford, whose translation of Pedro Calderón’s Life is a Dream opened this week at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh; and to Gigi Guizado, whose translation of Scherzo, by the Colombian radio drama pioneer Rafael Guizado, was published last month in Asymptote. Whoop!
Today is #translationthurs and I wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate all of the brilliant work that is happening in theatre translation lately. It’s a bumper time.
October saw the long-awaited New Nordics festival take place at Jackson’s Lane in London, produced by Cut the Cord, with Camilla Gürtler at the helm. In the space of one week, productions of plays from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and the Faroe Islands were showcased. The standard was incredibly high and I sincerely hope we see these works again. New Nordics was due to open almost exactly as the COVID-19 pandemic sent the UK into lockdown. The persistence of Cut the Cord to rise from this adversity is magnificent to see.
In publishing, we were treated to brand new anthologies. Translated and edited by Jozefina Komporaly, no fewer than five contemporary playwrights from Romania are presented here in English for the first time in Dramaturgies of Subversion, published by Bloomsbury.
From Russian, Tatiana Klepikova has edited Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights, also from Bloomsbury. And fans of contemporary theatre translated from Russian will also be excited to get their hands on Letters to Robot Werther by Natalia Rubanova, translated by Rachael Daum and published by Carrion Bloom. (Be quick: I understand it’s selling like hotcakes!)
The indefatigable Foreign Affairs bounce back into in-person performance this month with the world premiere of Marc-Antoine Cyr’s Where I Call Home, translated by Charis Ainslie. Don’t miss this, from November 23rd in Foreign Affairs’ home of Haggerston, London. What can I say about the brilliant artistic directors Camila França and Trine Garrett, other than that they deserve all the praise for championing theatre that knows no borders?
And I just learned today, via Olivia Hellewell, my former fellow translator in residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation, that the Canadian-led Company Crane Theatre is working on a volume of works by Ivan Cankar, ‘regarded as the greatest writer in the Slovene language’. Watch this space.
The London Spanish Theatre Company continues to showcase plays from Spain in English translation (and in Spanish). Check out their website which includes a wealth of interviews with writers, trailers, and more.
With my colleagues at Out of the Wings, we continue to meet monthly to read a play in translation from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds, and welcome anyone, whatever their language background, to sit around our (virtual) table. So far this autumn we’ve read work from Colombia and Mexico. Next up, a new play from Brazil, on November 26.
And, yes, I am going to plug my own work: rehearsals begin this Monday for Pablo Manzi’s A Fight Against… at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Postponed from May 2020 owing to the pandemic, it is so exciting to be back, and with a cast and company of creatives to inspire. This project means a lot to me and I do hope you’ll come and share in it. We open on December 9th.
Profuse apologies to any projects I have missed in my excitement. Today I really wanted to give a shout-out all in one place to all of this great work. If you’re working on a play in translation, let me know.
Finally, I want also to encourage programmers, decision-makers and purveyors of opportunity in the Anglophone theatre world to dive in, join in, and engage with the world of international playwriting that a growing community of individuals, companies, publishers and other collectives are working so hard to bring to English-speaking audiences and readers.
Onwards and upwards!
