Out of the Wings

AHRC-funded project ‘Out of the Wings’ presents its

2010 Symposium

‘Spanish Golden Age Drama in Translation and Performance’

at Merton College, Oxford

18-19 March 2010

REGISTRATION FORM AVAILABLE HERE:

Registration and Accommodation, Catering OTW ‘10

Translating and performing the works of Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina and Calderón de la Barca, and other playwrights of the Golden Age have sparked an increasing amount of interest, heightened by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2004-5 Golden Age season. Our Symposium will be attended by both academic and theatrical practitioners working within the field of Golden Age drama, and a wider base of attendees interested in Spanish theatre in general, as well as University colleagues and students. Speakers will be drawn from the United States and Europe, representing a variety of areas of expertise in translation and performance of the comedia. Please explore our website (www.outofthewings.org) for more information on the project, and see the rest of the blog for past events.

Black and White Rainbow theatre company present our own David Johnston’s translation of this ‘mad’ play at the Trafalgar Studios in the New Year.

For more information see the London Theatre Guide article here.

Last week three members of the Out of the Wings team, namely David Johnston, Jonathan Thacker and Kathleen Jeffs traveled to New York for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2009 conference. Our seminar was a great success; 23 participants of our wiki-conversation which has been ongoing for the past year were in attendance. There never seems to be enough time to have the conversations, which seem to be over as soon as they begin, but the encounter continued with a post-seminar discussion and we hope it will continue into the future. Our preparatory conversation is available for viewing online. For the main site see the Main Wiki, and see here for our specific 2009 New York Seminar.

Specific thanks go to the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre, particularly Ben Gunter and Susan Paun de Garcia, without whom the seminar would not have been possible.

For more information about the Association for Theatre in Higher Education see the ATHE Website or this year’s conference site, Risking Innovation.

Translating Golden Age drama brings up many questions of interpretation, form and meaning; but whether to translate the comedia in rhyming verse or not is still a heated debate. One translator, Gregary Racz, believes strongly that the comedia should be translated in verse, a view which has also been taken by Philip Osment in his rhyming, metrical Pedro the Great Pretender for the RSC’s Spanish Golden Age season, and by Victor Dixon in both his translations and his scholarship. Some translators, such as David Johnston, invent their own forms, keeping a regular metre but rhyming only in selected passages, such as sonnets. I invite your comments and views, readers; here is an article by Racz to get the conversation started (see p. 4-6 of this issue of ‘The Gotham Translator’).

The Case Against Preserving Meter and Rhyme in Poetic Translation: Theory or Practice?

American Society for Theatre Research
November 11-15, 2009
San Juan, Puerto Rico
THEATRE, PERFORMANCE, DESTINATION

There is a Golden Age Working Group, New Approaches to Plays from the Spanish Golden Age: Destiny, Nation Formation, & Puerto Rican Perspectives

The Working Group will divide into three teams: one working on Lo fingido verdadero, another on Fuente Ovejuna, and finally on Los melindres de Belisa. See the ASTR 2009 Call for Participants.  

Questions regarding this Session may be directed to the conveners at astr_gold_2009@yahoo.com

For general information please see the Conference Website.

The Association for Hispanic Classical Theater presents its 2009 Symposium on Golden Age Theater in El Paso, Texas, 5-7 March 2009. Among the invited speakers will be David Johnston of Queen’s University Belfast (one of the Project Directors of Out of the Wings). The Symposium runs alongside the Siglo de Oro Drama Festival held yearly at Chamizal National Memorial. For more information, see the AHCT Symposium Website

Or learn more about the Siglo de Oro festival from the Chamizal National Memorial