in

undercover

New Approaches to Plays from the Spanish Golden Age through Hidden Histories of Women & Native Americans

mission

The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is forming a working session to:

• Uncover new riches from theater history’s best-kept secret – the Spanish Comedia nueva.
• Overhear vibrantly expressed underdog perspectives, as Native Americans and women take center stage.
• Unearth golden opportunities for critical study, performance experimentation, and dynamic teaching.

ways in

In pursuit of its mission, this working session forms multidisciplinary teams to dig into two revolutionary plays currently poised for explosion in America:

1. 1.     Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer (c. 1640). 

Known Fact:  playwright Ana Caro (c. 1600–1652) illuminates undercover history of female playwrights during the Siglo de Oro.

Known Fact:  protagonist Leonor (a/k/a Leonardo) mounts feminist counter-attack on Don Juan.

Facts To Be Determined:  How do Caro and her heroine open new horizons for Comedia research, shedding light on theater-making during the Spanish Golden Age and raising implications for staging and teaching today?  How does translation by Amy Williamsen (Courage, Betrayal, and a Woman Scorned) and editing by Ian Borden equip this play for resurgence in America?

1. 2.     Lope de Vega’s El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colón (c. 1600).

Known Fact:  first play in history to put Native Americans on stage.

Known Fact:  explores the causes and consequences of first contact between Europe and America.

Facts To Be Determined:  How do Nuevo mundo’s Amerindian characters interrogate theater’s capacity to challenge expectations about aliens, explode stereotypes, and promote human rights?  How can translation for Florida’s quincentennial (1513-2013) make this play a springboard for everyday citizens to engage in cultural rediscovery?

infiltration plan

Assembling multidisciplinary teams that link modern language experts with theater scholars, incorporate enthusiastic newcomers, and build on a history of collaborations previously sponsored by ASTR’s Comedia research group, this venture penetrates cultural barriers as participants:

• Post initial responses to target plays on session’s wiki (June).

• Contribute to online library of resources for researching target plays (July).

• Formulate collaborative list of team research questions (August).

• Produce an individual paper that explores a target play through a specific research question (September).

• Respond to other team members’ papers and develop presentations for ASTR’s conference (October).

• Participate in presentations that report team findings, stimulate discussion, and actively involve all ASTR members attending the session’s meeting in Nashville (November).

moles

Experienced agents already stationed in the field to help teams dig effectively include:

Team Leaders Karen Berman (Georgia College & State University), Nena Couch (Ohio State University), Janine Kehlenbach (11 Minutes Theatre Company, Denver), and Darci Strother (California State University San Marcos).

Senior Scholars Ian Borden (University of Nebraska Lincoln), Ben Gunter (Theater with a Mission, Tallahassee), Grover Wilkins 3^rd (Orchestra of New Spain, Dallas), and Amy Williamsen (University of North Carolina Greenboro).

Respondent Susan Paun de García (Denison University).

special operative appeals

• Because operations to incorporate comedias into teaching, production, and research in America can fail when agents encounter difficulty in decoding texts, teams will focus on equipping target plays with features that make them user-friendly – e.g., guides to critical hotspots, maps for classroom activities, and pointers for putting the scenes into production.  These resources will remain available longterm via wikispace postings.

• Because this session targets comedias newly translated for performance in the US, team presentations will include rehearsed readings of critical scenes, putting research findings into practice and enhancing the session with performance elements.  Readings may be re-presented afterhours to ASTR at large.

agent selection procedure

1) Craft 250-word statement spelling out your personal interest in going undercover with one of these comedias.  Zero in on any aspect of the project that appeals to you.  No prior experience required; diversity desired.

2) Add 150-word biographical sketch.  Go public about your modern language skills, experience with theater production and/or pedagogy, allied research interests, and/or raw enthusiasm.

3) Send statement & sketch to ASTRundercover2012@yahoo.com by 31 May 2012.

4) Await response.

recruitment disclosures

PLEASE NOTE:  This is not a call to write a paper and read it at a conference, but a quest to burrow into research targets through months-long scholarly exchanges, to share findings with fellow agents (in writing) before ASTR meets, and to engage in intelligence-altering discussion of discoveries at the conference.

More details on how ASTR working sessions operate is available at www.astr.org. (where you can also find dossiers on other working sessions you’ll be privileged to eavesdrop on by joining us undercover).

psst!

Emerging insider info @ spanish-golden-age-plays.wikispaces.com.

‘Invisible Presences’ is presented under the aegis of Out of the Wings, an AHRC‐funded project exploring Spanish theatre in English translation, in association with the Dramaturgies Project, and the Translation, Adaptation, and Dramaturgy Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.

Drama and Film Centre Queen’s University Belfast 18‐20 April 2011

This international conference will explore the dramaturgical processes of translation in performance practice, whether across language and culture or the translation of ideas into material production. Rather than seeing the processes of writing (whether collaborative or singleauthored), translation, rehearsal, production, and audience reception as separate and discrete, the conference will engage with approaches that view the process as more of a continuum, one that is perpetually at work. In this way the conference offers the opportunity for dialogue between contemporary practitioners, both translators and theatre makers, and for new insights into dramaturgy and translation that seek to map the growing convergence between theatre practice and translation.

The conference will feature:

• A range of eminent keynote speakers
• Practical workshops exploring issues of dramaturgy and translation
• Performances
• Panel sessions
• Round table discussions

Areas for discussion include, but are not limited to:

• Translation and its metaphorical apprehension of text
• Translation and its audiences
• Translation and the contingency of performance
• Collaborative translation processes
• The limits of translation
• Translation and ethics
• Dramaturgy as translation/ translational process
• Visual theatre: dramaturgies and translations of light, sound, space
• Technology: new relationships with audiences in online productions
• The dramaturgical process in different contexts:
• Case studies from practitioners and scholars exploring the issues and particularities of each context, such as community arts, theatre for young people, cross‐art collaboration processes and facilitation, ‘postdramatic’ dramaturgies, queer dramaturgies, disability arts, collaborative writing processes, etc.

Proposals addressing the themes of the conference are invited in the forms of:

• 20 minute paper presentation
• 2 hour workshop

Please submit proposals of 300 ‐ 500 words, with 150‐word biography, by 30 September 2010, to the organisers:

Alyson Campbell: a.e.campbell@qub.ac.uk

David Johnston: d.johnston@qub.ac.uk

Kurt Taroff: k.taroff@qub.ac.uk

LA TRADUCCIÓ EN ESCENA

II Jornades Internacionals de Traducció en les Arts Escéniques: Opera i Teatre

Location: Classroom 1 & 2 of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

THURSDAY 15 APRIL 2010

11h30-12h

• Initial Meeting, Classroom 2 of the Facultat de Traducció i Interpretació (Faculty of Translation and Interpreting) of the UAB

12h-13h:

• David Johnston (introduced by Joan Sellent): “Translation, Translation Studies and Theatre Practice”

Lunch

15h30-17h

• Chair: Miquel Edo
• Rossend Arqués: “Les belles infidèles: les traduccions d’actor”
• Laura Bernadini: “Teatro catalano contemporaneo in Italia: tradurre per la scena”
• Eduard Bartoll: “La sobretitulació d’obres teatrals”

17h-18h30

• Chair: Anna Corral
• Joaquim Sala: “Teoria i pràctica de la subtitulació d’Òperes: el cas d’Òpera oberta”
• Francesc Cortès: “La traducció i adaptació d’obres líriques a Catalunya: la formació i deformació d’una òpera cantada en català”
• Miquel Edo: “La rima, obstacle i repte en la traducció de llibrets d’òpera”

21h: Conference Dinner

FRIDAY 16 APRIL 2010

10h-11h30

• Chair: Pilar Orero
• Stephen Kelly: “Theatre Translation as Cultural and Historical Re-encounter: the British Reception of the Soweto Mysteries”
• Sarah Maitland: “Performing Hospitality: Translation, Difference and the Intercultural Stage”
• Aline Fernandes: “Travelling Plays, Travelling Audiences: From Marina Carr’s Irish Midlands to Somewhere Lost and Found in Brazil”

Coffee

12h-13h30

• Chair: Ramon Lladó
• Albers Franciscus: “Shakespeare on the Dutch scene”
• Ramon Farrés: “Distorsions del llenguatge en la dramatúrgia austríaca contemporània: un repte per al traductor”
• Joan Sellent: “La importància de ser fidel”

Lunch

16h-17h: Round Table Discussion

• Chair: David Johnston
• Lawrence Boswell: Theatre Director
• Sergi Belbel: Theatre Director, Dramaturg and Translator
• Cristina Genebat: Actress and Translator

17h: Close

For more information, please email Professor David Johnston at Queen’s University Belfast: d.johnston@qub.ac.uk or contact the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the UAB: d.traduccio@uab.cat

GRADUATE CONFERENCE funded by the AHRC and the GRADUATE SCHOOL IN
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

***Theatre translation as collaboration: re-routing text through
performance***

Saturday 20 March 2010 at Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS

Keynote speakers: Professor J. Michael Walton and playwright Colin Teevan

Round table chaired by critic Aleks Sierz, featuring playwright Martin
Crimp and theatre practitioners tba

Afternoon workshop led by Graínne Byrne of Scarlet Theatre

Call for Papers

Deadline for 200 word abstracts: 18 December 2009

The aim of this one-day graduate colloquium is to explore the
collaborative creative processes involved in the re-routing of text from
page to stage: what happens when a text is translated for performance?

We wish to examine the act of theatre translation in all its multiple
variations, including versions, adaptations and inter-semiotic transfers
(for example from film or book to stage). How does research engage with
the collaborative nature of translating for performance? We hope to expand
and facilitate the dialogue between theatre practitioners and academics,
illuminating the practice/theory debate. To this end we particularly
welcome papers that of themselves contain a practical or performance
element or that examine how we construct performance and how a performance
text might be written and received.

All forms of theatre translation (inter- and intra-lingual and
inter-medial) will be considered. The main focus is to address and
investigate both overt and implicit collaboration in translating for
performance.

We invite abstracts for 20 minute presentations from all graduate students
currently working in Theatre (including dance and design), Translation,
Performance or Language Studies, or related areas.

Keywords: Theatre, text, translation, transcription, transliteration,
transfiguration, performance, reception, audience, collaboration,
adaptation, version, literal, literary, transculturation, neutrality,
identity, otherness, ownership, agency, copyright, theory, practice.

All enquiries and abstracts to translation-colloquium@qmul.ac.uk. Please
include with your abstract a brief biography (50 words).

Organising Committee

Geraldine Brodie g.brodie@qmul.ac.uk
Kate Eaton k.r.eaton@qmul.ac.uk
Margherita Laera m.laera@qmul.ac.uk
Tiffany Watt-Smith t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk

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.

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.

We will be presenting on Wednesday, 8 April, from 11:30-1:30. 

The format of our panel is as follows:

Out of the Wings: Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation 

Translating Golden Age plays for Modern Performance

Jonathan Thacker and Kathleen Jeffs

Translating for Performance

David Johnston and Gwynneth Dowling

 Translation and Models of Performance

Catherine Boyle and Gwendolen Mackeith

 Performance and edition: scholarly challenges in digitising Hispanic theatre materials

Paul Spence and John O’Neill

The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) is an international collective of scholars, educators, and practitioners founded in 1986.  The association hosts an annual conference, where upwards of 1000 people gather to present panels, conduct demonstrations, meet world-famous theatre artists, and test-drive new ideas.

For the first time in ATHE’s history, this conference will feature a Seminar addressing the dramaturgy of the Siglo de Oro:  Strategies for Reviving Plays from the Spanish Golden Age, In Class and On Stage. Through pre-conference exchanges, in-conference discussions, and post-conference networking, this Seminar offers participants (and their auditors) extraordinary opportunities to share insights, interact with international experts, and forge new developments in the field.

The deadline for submitting an abstract is Nov 1, so if you’re interested in participating, read on!

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:

Strategies for Reviving Plays from the Spanish Golden Age, In Class and On Stage

A Seminar for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference on “Risking Innovation”

New York City, 8-11 August 2009

The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) is an international collective of scholars, educators, and practitioners founded in 1986.  The association hosts an annual conference, where upwards of 1000 people gather to present panels, conduct demonstrations, meet world-famous theatre artists, and test-drive new ideas.

The 2009 conference will be held at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel (home of Broadway’s Marquis Theatre) in conjunction with the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE).  “Risking Innovation” is the theme.  Emerging details about the conference are online at www.riskinginnovation.com, and more information about ATHE is available through www.athe.org.

For the first time in ATHE’s history, this conference will feature a Seminar addressing the dramaturgy of the Siglo de Oro:  Strategies for Reviving Plays from the Spanish Golden Age, In Class and On Stage. Through pre-conference exchanges, in-conference discussions, and post-conference networking, this Seminar offers participants (and their auditors) extraordinary opportunities to share insights, interact with international experts, and forge new developments in the field.

To participate in this Seminar, submit a 250 word abstract of your proposed contribution by November 1, using the process detailed at www.riskinginnovation.com/program.html.

This website posts the seminar’s official Call for Papers, provides information (and answers many questions) about the seminar format, and opens the link to submit abstracts.

Questions not answered at www.riskinginnovation.com/program.html should be referred to the seminar’s convener, Ben Gunter, via e-mail to athe2009sigloseminar@yahoo.com.