Time to accept I will never get to updating this regularly! It’s been eight months. Here’s what’s been happening, or some of it.

2022 began as 2021 ended, with Pablo Manzi’s A Fight Against… at the Royal Court.  My previous post to this was written just before the commencement of rehearsals; what happened next was a fantastic few months with a gift of a cast and company working on this brilliant new play from Chile, with sold-out performances in our final week and enthusiastic responses from audiences and reviewers alike.  Towards the end of the run I had the great pleasure of chairing a post-show on the theme of Staging Latin America with, among others, assistant director Mariana Aristizábal. Both the production and the panel were recorded and will be available to stream at a later date.  And during the rehearsals I was invited by New York’s Play Company to discuss translation for the stage in one of their lunchtime talks.

Fans of Manzi might be interested to know that my colleague Camila Ymay González has translated his earlier play You Shall Love, available here from Inti Press.

Almost immediately A Fight Against… closed, I was back at the Court to lead its first-ever Introduction to Translation group.  Over eight sessions and culminating in a wonderful sharing of their translations, I worked with a cohort of nine artists working from Arabic, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, isiNdebele, Polish, Russian and Turkish.  It was an immense privilege to lead this inaugural project, and I am grateful to the many guest speakers and co-facilitators who were part of it (listed below*).  We hope to return in 2023.

No sooner was the workshop complete than Out of the Wings, having continued our monthly play readings sessions, was hosting A Spring Kindling at Omnibus Theatre.  In hybrid form, we gathered translators, friends and co-conspirators together for an evening of sharing and dreaming, with an open-mic of theatre in translation, an exchange of ideas and plans, and the announcement of our 2022 festival of readings; more on that shortly.

Give us a wave! I did a stint in online corner for the hybrid OOTW ‘Spring Kindling’ (Photo: Patricio Soto-Aguilar)

Next was the third edition of the Theatre503 Translator and Directors ‘Speed-Dating’ event.  This online gathering introduced seven theatre translators to seven directors in short 1-2-1 conversations.  Previous editions of the event have led to collaborations (such as the 2022 production of This Last Piece of Sky at The Space); there was great enthusiasm for the 2023 event (the below reaction from one participant says it all!), so I look forward to seeing its outcomes in the not-too-distant future.  (I’m also thrilled to be back in 2022 as a reader for T503’s biennial playwriting award.)

Then in July, Out of the Wings returned to Omnibus for our sixth annual festival of UK premiere readings of plays from Iberia and Latin America.  Even as London sweltered under 40-degree heat, we shared five outstanding evenings in Omnibus’s air-conditioned main house of plays from Venezuela to Portugal via Mexico, Spain and Argentina, including our usual mix of contemporary award-winning writers, emerging writers, rediscovered classics and, a first in 2022, work for children.  To mark the latter, I chaired a panel discussion in the theme of translation for young audiences, with Polka Theatre’s Peter Glanville among the panellists.  It was heartening to hear just how international young people’s theatre is in the UK; theatres playing to adult audiences could learn something!

The six plays featured at OOTW2022. All UK premieres, and totalling 33 plays since our festival began!

As to my own translation work, I’ve continued to be blessed with some great projects coming my way.  In March, Miami’s Arca Images premiered Abel González Melo’s appropriately titled Abyss, a labyrinth of accusations and moral dilemma set at a national theatre company, with my translation used for live in-ear interpreting.  With support from the Fundación SGAE, I completed my translation of Mafalda Bellido’s stunning The Earth Eaters, an uncompromising look at the ongoing failure in Spain to find justice for the victims of the Franco dictatorship.  Next up, in September, is The Bit-Players, a hilarious ‘play going wrong’ ensemble piece by the great Spanish playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra.  It’s been a joy to work on this play for the Southwark Playhouse Young Company: come see us in September!  I’m continuing to work with a number of producers and publishers on various R&D or publishing projects, and I’ve just had confirmation that I will be translating the third and final instalment of Borja Ortiz de Gondra’s Basque trilogy of plays, The Last Gondras, having translated parts one and two previously.

I also continued my work with students, researchers and practitioners in university settings, delivering workshops or talks this semester at the universities of Nottingham, Leicester and Lincoln, as well as masterclasses for the American Literary Translators Association and the renowned literary translation summer school at Bristol Translates.

These are the highlights of my personal translation year so far, but much praise should be heaped upon the many others who are working so hard to promote international theatre in the Anglosphere in the wake of covid and in the face, sadly, of continued resistance from a sector that often remains stubbornly Anglocentric.  Global Voices Theatre staged Global Jewish Voices at the Bush, the outcome of an initiative that was close to two years in the making and resulted in a brilliant sharing of international plays by Jewish writers curated by Victor Esses (brilliant podcast here with the writers, hosted by Victor).  Foreign Affairs followed their UK premiere production of Where I Call Home with an Open House of international theatre and the return of their pioneering theatre translation mentorship.  Translator Charis Ainslie produced her own translation of This Last Piece of Sky at The Space, and new company Art Translated started with a bang at the Seven Dials Playhouse with their production of Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea.

And as I write, I am glad to see that the Finborough will be staging two UK premieres of plays from Ukraine, reminding me that it is quite a luxury to be sitting here pontificating on theatre in translation while Ukrainians continue to defend themselves against invasion and aggression. Can theatre help in such times? I hope so.

Onwards, colleagues in translation, and here’s to whatever the rest of 2022 may bring.

*With me on the Royal Court journey were: guest speakers and facilitators Almiro Andrade, Tian Brown-Sampson, Sasha Dugdale, Rosie Elnile, Camila França, Trine Garrett, Camila Ymay González, Catherine Grosvenor, Rosalind Harvery, Sawad Hussein, Jeremy Tiang, Matthew Xia; and Royal Court folks Gurnesha Bola, Romana Flello, Ellie Horne, Nkechinyere Nwobani-Akanwo, Sam Prichard and Rachel Toogood.