Projects & Production

I began my own career as a translator by speculatively translating a play – Julio Escalada’s Springtime – and co-producing it myself at the Finborough Theatre in London.

(Photo: Global Queer Plays © Ali Wright)

Since then, I have continued to conceive of projects and work to make them come into being, with a particular focus on bringing to audiences in the UK work by writers and theatre artists they might otherwise not be introduced to. These projects have led to further collaborations between the artists involved, new opportunities for plays and playwrights, and even the formation of new companies.

With Out of the Wings (OOTW), I am part of the strategy and production team of an annual festival of UK-premiere play-readings, combining new writing with new translation of classic texts, alongside workshops and discussions forums. 2023 marked the seventh annual event, which has showcased 40 plays from 13 countries, ranging from C15th Mallorca to the present day Panama, and has led to publications, full productions and further collaborations in the UK and beyond.

Better to support the work of emerging theatre translators, I proposed and led production for OOTW’s first-ever Emerging Theatre Translators’ Scratch night, hosted online by the Omnibus Theatre in February 2021.

Also at the Omnibus, I led production for ‘OOTW in Focus: Black Playwrights of the Spanish- and Portuguese-Speaking Worlds’, a day of panels, conversations and a film screening exploring the work and translation of Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Lusophone theatre artists.

To bring together students, translators, scholars and practitioners, I conceived of and produced ‘Making New Worlds from Old’, a day of workshops, discussions and performance exploring myth and legend in international theatre, with Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Foreign Affairs, and Language Acts and World-Making.

For more about my wider work with OOTW, including programming, marketing and strategy, click here.

For the Arcola Theatre, I pitched, co-curated and led four panel discussions for Global Queer Plays, a weekend of UK-premiere play-readings of international work by LGBTQ+ writers. The event sold out, led to a publication of all seven plays, and gave the impetus for the formation of the international theatre company Global Voices Theatre with whom I continue to work. Read my write-up of the event here.

As a committee member of the Translators Association in the UK from 2018-2021, I promoted themes such as the mental health and well-being of freelancers and collaborated in producing events such as the discussion, networking and development day, ‘Translating Well’, in 2020. I also led the TA’s theatre translation working group.

For Theatre503 I pitched and twice hosted a Translators and Directors ‘speed-dating’ event, introducing a cohort of theatre translators to a group of directors, in person in 2019 and online in 2021 and 2022. The event led to ongoing relationships and collaborations and I hope will be repeated in 2023.

This page focusses on my work conceiving of and producing projects. Elsewhere you can read about my work writing and editing, translating, speaking or chairing discussions, in dramaturgy and script reading, and teaching and mentoring.