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.

Mision Symposium Poster

There will be an exciting symposium on the Spanish Civil War
and theatre at the University of Leeds. There are also performances of
the play (in Spanish) on Thursday 3 and Saturday 5 December at
Stage@Leeds. Tickets are available from www.stage.leeds.ac.uk

This symposium seeks to investigate performative trajectories, without neglecting to map the histories and genealogies that inform them. It will explore the ways in which our critical tools – such as postcolonialism and interculturalism – can help us to understand a new cosmopolitan geography and the power relations it reflects. We are interested in finding the spaces where local performance, global performance, the theatre of the centre and the theatre of the margins overlap.  In analysing these spaces we hope to open up a discourse that explores contemporary conceptions of community and universality, and to develop critical schemata to deal with race, class, nationality and gender in performance.

Keynote Speakers: Peter M Boenisch, University of Kent and Silvija Jestrovic, University of Warwick.

The areas of interest for our panelists, performers and workshop coordinators might involve, but are by no means limited to:

* Global performative frameworks/networks
* The significance of cultural boundaries and national borders to performance
* Postcolonial stages
* Theatres of exchange, surrogation and/or substitution
* Tracing trajectories and accounting for histories in intercultural theatre practice
* Cosmopolitan performance
* Community theatre and globalization

Please send 300-word abstracts for papers and workshops along with a brief biography by 13 April to the conference organisers at:mappingperformance@rhul.ac.uk.

Mapping Performance will form the starting-point for the Autumn 2008 issue of Platform, a postgraduate eJournal of Theatre and Performing Arts. Conference participants and delegates are invited to submit papers for this issue: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/drama/platform/.

Conference Organizers: Emer O’Toole and Mara Lockowandt

Janet Morris, Project Associate, Out of the Wings, writes:

We were delighted to meet such a wide range of theatre practitioners and researchers at our symposium in London on 6-7 February. Some 50 dramaturgs, translators, actors, directors, theatre and literary managers, researchers and publishers braved the wintry weather to join us.  With challenging ideas highlighted by the speakers, and active participation by the delegates, discussions focused on practical issues and the sharing of experiences in producing and performing translated plays.

Topics covered including commissioning translations; the translator in the theatre and the rehearsal room; managing the stages of translation; translating titles; translation and the problematic; and – at the heart of theatre practice – translation and the performable. The two-day event concluded with a rehearsed reading of Catherine Boyle’s English translation of Las brutas by Chilean playwright Juan Radrigán, directed by Sue Dunderdale.  The impressive performance, and the discussion which followed, brought together many of the issues that had been considered earlier.  But there is so much more to explore…

This symposium is our first in a series of events seeking to bring together the multi-faceted processes of translation for the stage.  Please keep checking this website for details of future activities.

Meanwhile if you have not yet joined our email list, you can do so via the Contribute link.  And you can always contact us by email on info@outofthewings.org

We have now finalised the programme for our February symposium, aimed at theatre practitioners and researchers with an interest in the performance of translated plays.  We will be looking at translation as part of the collaborative process of stagecraft, focusing on practical solutions to practical problems. The timetable will ensure that participants have ample opportunity to raise issues and share their experiences.

Details of the full programme can be found here: london-symposium-programme-feb-09

Read on for more details… (more…)

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

‘Out of the Wings’ was represented well at this weekend’s ‘Beyond Spanish: The Many Lorcas’ symposium at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. We received a very warm welcome from the theatre’s Artistic Director, Hamish Glen. The day was well attended, with fifty delegates braving the rain to hear talks by David Johnston, Catherine Boyle, Jo Clifford, Mike Thompson, Paul Binding and Nicholas Boalsch. After a delightful sandwich lunch, we were escorted over to a theatre space next door where we were treated to a special performance of ‘Play without a Title’, translated by David Johnston and directed by Jonathan Heron of Fail Better Productions. After the production we were very privileged to be able to discuss the play and the director’s approach with the company, and the mix of theatre practice with a room full of knowledge of Lorca bred fruitful discussion. We were fed once again by the Belgrade’s fantastic catering service, after meeting the cast and dramaturg for ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’. As we had been discussing the play all day in the symposium, it was the perfect culmination to the day to see Gadi Roll’s full production up on the stage. Afterwards we chatted with the actors and translator and it seemed the symposium would extend into the night, with a real buzz around the day and a feeling of success and thought-provoking conversation.

In addition to thanking the ensembles of both ‘Play without a Title’ and ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’, we were especially impressed with the quality of the facilities, catering, and service provided by the Belgrade Theatre. We’ll certainly be back for another visit.