Out of the Wings

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

New book on Golden Age Drama in Contemporary Spain

9 December 2010

Coming soon from the University of Wales Press:

Golden Age Drama in Contemporary Spain: The Comedia on Page, Stage and Screen

Duncan Wheeler


This is the first book dedicated to the performance and reception of sixteenth and seventeenth century national drama in contemporary Spain. It contextualises the socio-historical background to productions of works by the country’s three major Spanish baroque playwrights (Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina), whilst also providing detailed, accessible and jargon-free aesthetic analyses of individual stage and screen adaptations. Plot summaries of each of the plays discussed are included, and the extensive bibliography will provide an essential resource for academics, practitioners and students alike.

See the poster for full information:  Golden Age Drama in Contemporary Spain

Olives and Blood, a play about Lorca, FREE Playreading in London

15 November 2010

Liminal Space Productions presents

Olives and Blood

By Michael Bradford
A rehearsed readingwith Q & A at Caravanserai Studios, 7.30pm December 15th2010
Directed by Prav Menon-Johansson

Liminal Space Productions presents a rehearsed reading of anew play in development  Olives and Blood (SOMBRA de unPOETA en la OLIVAR ) by American playwright, MichaelBradford who will be flying in from Granada, Spain where he is on aFulbright Scholarship to attend the reading and to host a Q & A.

Michael Bradford (Associate Head of Theatre Studies,Associate Professor of Playwriting at the University of Connecticut, USA,Fulbright Scholar)
Bradford?s work has been produced Off-Broadway at the American PlaceTheatre, and elsewhere in New York at the Lark Developmental Theatre, The Flea,The Access and the NADA Theatre. He has received the Manhattan Theatre ClubPlaywright fellowship, the LARK Theatre Writers Residency and the New YorkStage and Film Residency, New York. His play, LIVING IN THE WIND, received overten AUDELCO Theatre award nominations, and WILLY?S CUT AND SHINE was recentlypublished by Broadway Play Publishing and produced at the ETA Creative Theatre, Chicago, Ilinois.

Bradford is considered one of the most promising African American playwrights today.

Olives and Blood
This is a contemporary play about the murder of Spanish poet andplaywright, Federico Garcia Lorca.  The drama focuses on one of the murderers who stood on that dark hillside in 1936.  One particular murderer, Juan Luis Trescastro Medina (for the purpose of this play renamed simply, Trescante), later bragged about his involvement in the deluded attemptto silence Lorca’s  voice by silencing his life.  In the end, Trescante cannot help but realize that neither five bullets, nor unmarked massgrave, nor thirty years of banning the works of Lorca had the power to stillthe Poet?s voice.  Instead, it is the murderer, living and breathing inthe world, who has become the voiceless, invisible one.

Performance:            WednesdayDecember 15th 2010 at 7.30pm

Venue:                       CaravanseraiStudios (Entrance to the studio is at:
334B Ladbroke Grove) http://www.caravanseraiproductions.com/

Nearest tubes:             KensalGreen (Bakerloo line, Overground), Kensal Rise (Overground) orLadbroke Grove (Circle, Hammersmith & City)Buses 23, 52, 316, 452 (Kensal House stop)2 minutes walk from Sainsbury’s by the canal

Tickets:            Free, Reservations required with Prav Menon-Johansson

For further information please contact Prav Menon-Johansson at pravmj@mac.com.
Prav Menon-Johansson
Mobile: 07799 412328
Website: www.pravmjdirect.com

Out of the Wings Live

13 October 2010

Great news. The Out of the Wings website is now live!

Search our lists of plays and playwrights.

Create an account and add your own information about writers, playwrights and translations.

Out of the Wings Symposium Speaker Carries on the Charge!

23 July 2010

Davis Crusades for New Golden Age of Spanish Drama

By Catherine Ferraro
Rick Davis, associate provost of undergraduate education, professor of theater, and co-artistic director of Theater of the First Amendment.

While few individuals in the English-speaking world recognize the name Pedro Calderón de la Barca, he is on a level with Shakespeare in his native country.

Calderón is regarded as one of Spain’s leading dramatists who helped further develop the country’s golden age in the 17th century. But because comparatively few of his plays have been translated, Calderón’s influence seldom reaches beyond the Spanish-speaking world.

Joining other like-minded individuals eager to spread the word about Spanish-language theater, Rick Davis, associate provost of undergraduate education, professor of theater, and co-artistic director of Theater of the First Amendment, presented a paper on Calderón at the 2010 Out of the Wings Symposium held in England in March.

A translator and director of Calderón’s plays, which he much admires, Davis presented “Calderón Beyond the Dream: Thoughts on Text and Production for a New Golden Age” at the two-day conference held at Oxford University’s Merton College. The conference focused on Spanish golden-age dramas and new approaches to production and translation.

Despite the success and popularity of Calderón and his golden-age contemporaries in their homeland, only one of Calderón’s plays, “Life is a Dream,” is widely anthologized, studied and produced by American college theater departments and professional companies, Davis notes.

“One of the reasons that Calderón and Spanish theater in general is relatively invisible in America is because we don’t have access to the range of the works of these playwrights like we do Shakespeare and Ibsen,” says Davis. “Therefore, American theaters and universities are hesitant to produce or teach a play that they haven’t read by a playwright they don’t know.”

In fact, according to Davis’ research, only 18 Spanish golden-age plays were produced in the past 15 seasons at professional theaters in the United States, of which there are about 400.

Meaningful translations and productions will help bring Spanish theater and playwrights to life in the English-speaking world, Davis argues. Although no translation is fully accurate, he notes, translators should try to capture the feeling and tone of the original work while striving for what he calls “speakability.” This allows the language to spring to life in the mouths of actors in a way that is understandable and accessible to contemporary audiences.

Throughout his presentation at Oxford, Davis drew on his own work in translation and production of Spanish-language theater. In a volume published in 2008 titled “Calderón de La Barca: Four Great Plays of the Golden Age,” Davis gave readers a taste of the playwright’s broad reach. Davis chose to translate four plays that range from delightful romantic comedy to serious religious epic: “The Phantom Lady,” “The Constant Prince,” “Life is a Dream” and “The Great Theater of the World.”

“I have a kind of missionary zeal when it comes to expanding the canon of dramatic literature that is actively studied and staged,” says Davis. “I wanted to create this volume of translations because it’s unfair to judge Calderón based on his one popular play, as is the case with many other Spanish dramatists.”

Davis makes a case for a natural alliance between theater companies steeped in Shakespeare and the material of the golden age. Though the texts are quite different, the actors know how to work with classical rhetoric, and audiences are accustomed to listening to the nuances of the language, he says.

As a final call to action at the symposium, Davis proposed an “all-out assault” on the 264 Shakespeare festivals, companies and theaters in North America, encouraging his colleagues to send out their playable and meaningful translations and production strategies. Since returning from the conference, Davis has sent out more than 20 copies of his Calderón book to companies and theaters across the country.

“Now,” he says with a hint of self-mockery, “I sit by the phone and wait for the flood of invitations to start pouring in.”

On a serious note, he adds, “Having the opportunity to be exposed to 17th-century Spain or any other time period in history is valuable to broadening one’s perspectives of the world. Hopefully, if our proposal is successful, we’ll soon see a burst of Spanish golden-age plays in North American theaters and be able to share these works with a new generation of individuals.”

—–
URL to article: http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/17412

Translating Theatre, Migrating Text(s)

8 June 2010

University of Warwick, 12 June 2010

Guest speakers: Professor  David Johnston, Professor Catherine Boyle

Roundtable discussion led by Silvija Jestrovic with Ermanna Montanari, Rani Moorthi, Paul Sirett and Matthew Zajac.

Translating Theatre. Migrating Text  is a one-day colloquium exploring places of contact between current thinking about translation, global performance and contemporary forms of migrant theatre. The first in a series of events on theatre and translation organized with partners from the University of East Anglia and Milan State University, the colloquium seeks to establish a forum for the discussion of translation and migrant theatre that is international, interdisciplinary and innovative in its engagement with translation theory and theatre practice. Our point of departure is a definition of theatre translation that sees it not only as the product of interlingual transfer but as a process of negotiation of cultural contact through performance. Moving from such a re-definition we intend to explore translation practices in the context of an increasingly global theatre market while interrogating the work of actors, directors and playwrights who centre their artistic practice in the context of migration

The day will be divided into three parts, combining theoretical and practical approaches. The first part will consist of a series of academic papers exploring possible points of contact between theatre translation and migrant theatre (the politics of representation and mimesis, questions of origin and authenticity, acceptance and/or resistance to assimilation, the hybrid nature of notions of culture, identity and language). The second part – From Page to Stage –, will be a roundtable discussion with practitioners (actors, directors, playwrights) which will focus on performance, highlighting the intertwining relationship between writing, translating and performing migrant narratives. The final part of the colloquium will include a practical workshop on the creation and interpretation of migrant characters by London-based theatre company Legal Aliens. The workshop will involve hands-on activities related to the construction of migrant characters and the mise en scène.

To register, please contact Kerry Drakeley (K.J.Drakeley@warwick.ac.uk)

Organizing committee: Cristina Marinetti, Alessandra De Martino Cappuccio, Annunziata Videtta

Catalandrama: Website of Contemporary Catalan Theatre Translation

9 April 2010

Catalandrama is a database of modern Catalan plays translated into other languages. The website has been established by the Obrador de la Sala Beckett with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull. The website contains biographies of authors, brief synopses of plays, as well as the option to order free PDF copies of Catalan plays in translation. It can be viewed in Catalan, Spanish and English.

Juan Mayorga: Way to Heaven. Sydney, 14 April to 8 May

9 April 2010

Way to Heaven, David Johnston’s translation of Juan Mayorga’s award-winning play Himmelweg (Camino del cielo), comes to Sydney’s SBW Stables Theatre between 14 April and 8 May 2010. Directed by Tanya Goldberg, the play is a collaborative production between the Ride On Theatre and Griffin Theatre Companies:

‘The curtain falls and, suddenly… that whole world disappears.’

1942. The heart of Europe. An orchestra performs in the village square. Two boys play with a spinning top. A young couple quarrel on a park bench. And a ramp rises from a deserted train station where the clock is frozen at six o’clock. An ordinary town goes about its ordinary day. People perform for their lives.

Way to Heaven ventures deep into the fracture between appearance, performance and the terrible reality of Theresienstadt – the concentration camp notoriously presented to the outside world as a model Jewish settlement.

From renowned Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga comes a searing examination of fear, control and the power of performance.

See a trailer for the production here: Way to Heaven Trailer.

Tanya Goldberg, director of the production, gives her thoughts on the production here: Tanya Goldberg discusses Way to Heaven.

PERFORMANCE DATES

Preview 14 April
Season 16 April – May 8

PERFORMANCE TIMES

Monday – Saturday 7pm
Saturday Matinee 8 May 2pm
School Matinee 4 May 12:30 pm

PRODUCTION NOTES

Translated by David Johnston

Director Tanya Goldberg
Set Designer Simone Romaniuk
Costume Designer Xanthe Heubel
Lighting Designer Verity Hampson
Producers Esti Regos, and Viv Rosman
for Performing Lines
Associate Producer Joanna Fishman
With Lexi Freiman, Nicholas Hope, Marko Jovanovic, Nathan Lovejoy, Terry Serio, Tami Sussman

VENUE

SBW Stables Theatre
10 Nimrod Street
Kings Cross NSW 2011

More information on this production can be found by clicking on the Griffin Theatre Company website.

Interview with Jo Clifford, Theatre Translator

8 April 2010

Jo Clifford, translator of Gil Vicente’s ‘Don Duardos’ which was recently staged as a rehearsed reading at the Burton-Taylor Studio Theatre in Oxford as part of our Symposium, has been interviewed on Start Talk:

Interview with Jo Clifford

STRANGERS by Spanish playwright Sergi Belbel, translated by Sharon Feldman

7 March 2010

Tuesday 30 March:

STRANGERS (written 2004)
by Spanish playwright Sergi Belbel; translated by Sharon Feldman
directed by Franko Figueiredo

STRANGERS is a GRIPPING TALE charting the disintegration of two generations of a Spanish family where the seeds of narrow-minded hatred that was planted bear BITTER FRUIT forty years later.

Strangers was first staged in Barcelona in 2004, and made into a film by Catalonian director, Ventura Pons in 2008.

agbaje, belbel, french,
richter, srbljanović and ting

StoneCrabs Theatre presents

origens
offthewall
ORIGENS/ORIGINS 2010-Vol. 1
Staged Readings Festival of Contemporary Plays from Europe
Soho theatre
(Upstairs Studio)
Tuesday 30th March
Thursday 1st April
Thursday 8th April

@ 7pm

BOOK ONLINE NOW
www.wegottickets.com tickets £5

*please note that there is a 10% online booking fee


Professor Lawrence Venuti, Queen’s University Belfast 8–9 March 2010

2 March 2010

Professor Lawrence Venuti, Queen’s University Belfast 8–9 March 2010

The Queen’s Research Forum for Translation and Cultural Encounter is hosting two seminars by Lawrence Venuti. Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University. He is also a translator and has written and edited a number of books on translation theory. The following two seminars will take place on 8 and 9 March 2010.

All are welcome to attend.

Monday 8 March, 7.00p.m.

Queen’s University Belfast. Seminar Room, Postgraduate Centre, 18 College Green. This seminar will be followed by a wine reception.

Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome

This lecture offers an historical examination and ideological critique of Jerome’s famous Letter to Pammachius (395CE), exploring its relation to Roman imperial culture, on the one hand, and to an emerging Christian culture, on the other. Jerome’s letter is the most influential statement of what can be called the instrumental model of translation, the notion that translation is the reproduction or imitation of an invariant contained in or caused by the source text. Jerome’s effort to sketch a Christian translation tradition is considered as a means of legitimizing his own translation practices, but attention is also given to modern developments like Eugene Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence. The aim is to formulate and argue for the comprehensiveness and ethical value of a hermeneutic model, the notion that translation is a variable interpretation that is culturally and historically contingent. The ethics of translation to be proposed here will draw on the work of Alain Badiou, specifically his concept of a truth‐based ethics that challenges institutionalized knowledges and communitarian interests. The instrumental model as formulated and applied by Jerome is affiliated with a Roman Christian elite whose interests are masked by its translation theory and practice.

Tuesday 9 March, 5.00p.m.

Queen’s University Belfast. Lanyon Building, Room G09

Ekphrasis, Translation, Critique

Translation theory enables a rigorous critical methodology that can advance thinking about ekphrasis, the verbal representation of visual art. The relation between such a second‐order work and its source material is not instrumental, not a reproduction or transfer of a formal or semantic invariant, but rather hermeneutic, an interpretation that varies source form and meaning through the application of an interpretant. The hermeneutic relation must be viewed as transformative because a key aspect of any interpretant is its relation to cultural traditions and social situations that differ from those of the source material. As a result, the hermeneutic relation can be treated not only as interpretive, a variable attempt to fix source form and meaning, but as interrogative, exposing the cultural and social conditions of the source material and of the second‐order work that has processed it. The critic in turn applies an interpretant, whether a critical methodology or specific interpretation, to formulate the hermeneutic relation and its interrogative effects. The lecture will review the literature on ekphrasis from the vantage point of translation theory and then develop a translation‐oriented method for reading ekphrastic texts. The case study is Rosanna Warren’s 1984 poem, “Renoir,” which is based on Renoir’s painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881).

For further information contact Professor David Johnston at d.johnston@qub.ac.uk

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