Exploring Advocacy Strategies to Increase Works in Translation on United States Stages

30 September 2024

This season’s Broadway hits have included plays translated from Russian (Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya) and Norwegian (Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People). This might suggest that plays in translation can thrive in US theatre, but that is only true for a limited number of playwrights, most of them not contemporary writers. Yasmina Reza of France, author of Art and God of Carnage, is the exception that proves the rule. Playwrights of enormous stature in their own countries, including Nobel Prize winners Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke, and Jon Fosse, have had few United States productions in both the nonprofit and commercial sectors.

We are both theatre scholars and teachers who have also long been committed to translating exciting contemporary drama and to promoting the production of plays in translation on stages in the United States. Adam translates from Spanish, focusing on Latin American playwrights, and many of his translations have been produced and published. Neil translates German-language and Francophone drama, and his translations have been staged in New York, Chicago, and other cities; he also directed student productions of several of his translations at Knox College. We and many fellow translators, along with directors and dramaturgs with a particular interest in international work, have been striving to introduce more plays in translation to theatre in the United States. We formed the Theatre in Translation Network (TinT), a collective that has been active for over a decade, and Adam created the journal the Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review back in 2007. Together and separately, we have spoken at the conferences of a variety of organizations and forged connections with many theatres and cultural associations.

In 2012, Adam organized Theatrical Translation as Creative Process: A Conference Festival at the University of North Carolina and Duke University. Over four days, participants from several countries discussed theatrical translation with particular focus on four translated plays presented in staged readings. Those conversations led Adam to publish the essay “The Creation of a National New Works in Translation Network” on HowlRound, proposing a network modeled in part on the National New Play Network. “What would happen,” Adam asked, “if we were to think of new translations of plays, both classical and contemporary, into English the same way that we think of new plays written in English?”

A network of the kind we had envisioned never came into being, yet we learned much about just how hard it is to make significant and lasting change to the landscape of US theatre.

That idea met with a promising response, leading to a convening at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC in summer 2013, which brought translators together with artistic directors, literary managers, agents, and representatives of cultural organizations. Working groups were formed to focus on specific areas like fundraising and liaising with embassies. And a follow-up meeting took place a year later at the Lark in New York. We had plans to launch a website presenting comprehensive lists of past productions and readings of plays in translation, including those at universities and colleges, as well as information about how to find scripts. We imagined workshops to encourage theatres to consider translated plays, as well as translators to translate plays, applications for funding, an advisory board, and so on. But all the enthusiastically engaged people already had great demands placed on them by their primary jobs, and it was hard to sustain the momentum we had built up. A network of the kind we had envisioned never came into being, yet we learned much about just how hard it is to make significant and lasting change to the landscape of US theatre.

Adam had made another important contribution to the promotion of play translation when he founded the Mercurian, responding to the dearth of journals willing to publish drama in translation (especially since the demise of Modern International Drama in 1996). Since 2007, the Mercurian has featured 143 plays translated into English from twenty-nine languages and thirty-six different countries, as well as articles on theatrical translation, interviews with translators, and book reviews. In keeping with our shared emphasis on bringing about productions, translators wishing to submit a script to the Mercurian must have seen and heard the translation presented in at least a reading if not a full staging. A core idea behind the journal’s conception has always been to move published translations into production, with some success. For instance, Salvadoran playwright Jorgelina Cerritos’s On the Other Side of the Sea as translated by Margaret Stanton and Anna Donko had been presented in a staged reading at Sweet Briar College in 2015 before being published in the Mercurian in 2016, and it was subsequently produced at Cherry Arts in Ithaca, New York in 2020. Meanwhile, excerpts from plays in translation appear more often than before in journals such as Asymptote (whose drama editor Caridad Svich is also a member of the Mercurian’s advisory board) and Another Chicago Magazine (where Neil serves as translations editor).

Jahmar Ortiz and Susannah Berryman in On the Other Side of the Sea by Jorgelina Cerritos, translated by Margaret Stanton and Anna Donko, at Cherry Arts. Directed by Sam Buggeln. Environment design by Daniel Zimmerman. Costume design by Sasha Oliveau. Lighting design by Christopher Brusberg. Original music by Mary Brett Lorson and Alexa Schmitz. Shadow puppetry by Linda Wingerter. Photo courtesy of the Cherry Arts Inc.

Productions of new plays in translation do happen on American stages: 2024 has already brought a play from Luxembourg (Don’t Wait for the Marlboro Man by Olivier Garofalo, translated by Philip Boehm) at Upstream Theater in St. Louis, and an Italian play (Carbon by Pier Lorenzo Pisano, translated by Carlotta Brentan) at the Cherry Arts. Both those theatres specialize in staging international work and belong to a small but vital group of such companies spread out across the country. Others include PlayCo in New York; ExPats Theatre in Washington, DC; and Trap Door Theatre in Chicago. Samuel Buggeln, artistic director of the Cherry Arts, is also an experienced translator and a co-conspirator of ours, and last year he initiated conversations with staff at those and many other companies for an essay published in American Theatre: “Lost and Found in Translation: Where Are All the International Plays?” Sam explores how theatre in the United States differs from that in other countries on the level of funding, artistic approach, and stylistic expectations. He passes on lots of insightful comments from his fellow theatre practitioners about why more international plays aren’t staged in the United States and how that might be changed. Regarding the importance of this work, everyone agrees with what Jim Nicola, formerly of New York Theatre Workshop, formulates this way: “Different perspectives on art-making keep the public discourse deeper and more probing. Artists who make work in different cultural contexts can only help us all in the search for a better world.”

Staged readings of plays in translation take place much more frequently than full productions, and the hope is always that such readings will lead to productions.

The drama Buggeln has himself translated and directed includes work from Argentina, which he first got to know through an earlier initiative involving another of our frequent collaborators, Jean Graham-Jones. For Buenos Aires in Translation (BAiT), created by the Argentine-born Shoshana Polanco and the Colombian native Felipe Gamba at Performance Space 122 in New York City in 2006, Graham-Jones translated four plays, all directed by United States-based artists and cast with New York actors. BAiT came up against an obstacle all too familiar to those of us working to enrich our own theatrical culture by means of theatrical translation. As Jean describes in her forthcoming book Contemporary Performance Translation: Challenges and Opportunities for the Global Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2024), the critical response to the plays was decidedly mixed, with many faulting these productions working transculturally and transnationally for not conforming to some preconceived notion of Argentine theatre, forcing the four plays produced to be “representative” of a Buenos Aires theatre that at the time had up to one thousand shows running weekly in venues of different sizes throughout the city.

Staged readings of plays in translation take place much more frequently than full productions, and the hope is always that such readings will lead to productions. The International Voices Project in Chicago has been presenting an annual festival of play readings—primarily of translated scripts—since 2010. Several of those play translations have subsequently been staged. For example, Neil’s translation of Austrian playwright Ewald Palmetshofer’s hamlet is dead. no gravity was presented by International Voices Project in 2013 and produced the following year by Red Tape Theatre, directed by Seth Bockley. Readings produced by International Voices Project, or by other more short-lived entities like Zeitgeist DC, are often hosted by non-theatrical organizations such as the Goethe-Institut or Instituto Cervantes, which have proven invaluable partners. Sometimes, however, this model can lead to audiences consisting mostly of regular attendees of those host institutions rather than theatregoers or theatre practitioners. Events at the Segal Center at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) in New York offer a different model, drawing more on theatre professionals as well as the academic community.

Lona Livingston, Amanda Drinkall, Alex Stage, and John Fenner Mays in hamlet is dead. no gravity by Ewald Palmetshofer, translated by Neil Blackadder, at Red Tape Theatre. Directed by Seth Bockley. Scenic design by Shawn Ketchum Johnson. Costume design by Izumi Inaba. Lighting design by Julie Mack. Sound design by Misha Fiksel. Production stage manager Daniel D. Drake. Photo by Austin D. Oie.

Readings typically offer only one-off performances with limited rehearsal time, but some programs have provided more time and the opportunity for a newly translated play to be workshopped before being presented to an audience. This is how the hotINK Festival in New York structured its work when it was hosted by the (sadly now defunct) Lark. In 2014, for instance, plays translated from French, German (Austria), and Spanish (Mexico) were workshopped in a week of rehearsals involving the playwright and translator as well as director and actors, and only then were they presented in staged readings. Unfortunately, hotINK is no longer running.

We have both long seen great potential for the production of plays in translation in the university and college realm. In planning their seasons, theatre departments typically have less need to focus on box office than professional theatres—especially larger theatres—and can be more open to taking risks. Translated plays with large casts might be out of the question for the constrained budgets of regional theatres; but large-cast shows hold appeal for university and college departments wishing to offer roles to many students. Neil successfully directed productions of his own translations at Knox College, and both of us have, at the conferences of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) and American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), urged colleagues at other institutions to consider staging new plays in translation. The Knox students responded very positively to Neil’s invitation not only to observe but to contribute to the process of refining his translations of plays such as Pierre de Marivaux’s The Island of Slaves and Ewald Palmetshofer’s Before Sunrise. For his 2008 production of Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Rosa and Blanca, Neil brought the playwright to campus to participate in classes and in talkbacks. His work in this area increased students’ understanding of and interest in translation, and several of his students went on to try their hand at translating plays themselves.

Lyle Lippincott, Eden Newmark, Lindsey Murrell, Bri Benson, Alicia Vallorani, Eric Feltes, and Brian Humphreys in Rosa and Blanca by Rebekka Kricheldorf, translated and directed by Neil Blackadder, at Knox College. Scenic design by Craig Choma. Lighting design by Mike Smith. Costume design by Magdalena Tortoriello. Sound design by David Semonchik. Production stage manager Ryn Flynn. Photo by Craig Choma.

Long-term, ongoing relationships may well prove fruitful in this arena. Joan Robbins at Ohio Northern University has organized an International Play Festival every other year since 2003, often featuring a brand new translation produced on campus in collaboration with the playwright and translator. For instance, having got to know the translators Andy Bragen and Kyoko Yoshida at the 2012 gathering in North Carolina, Joan commissioned a new Japanese play and its English translation for the festival in 2013. During his stint as translator in residence at Princeton University in 2023, Neil worked with the Theatre program to present staged readings of two of his translations with student actors, and he was invited back this year to direct a reading of play translated from the Ukrainian. And a mini-conference On Drama in Translation/Translation Dramaturgy, organized in 2022 at Washington University in St Louis by Julia Walker, involved both a full production of Taiwanese playwright Hsu Yenling’s The Dust, translated by Annelise Finnegan Wasmoen, and a keynote address by playwright/actor Ellen Mclaughlin, whose translation of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia was produced at Washington University later that year. Conversations in St Louis led to a well-attended 2023 ASTR Field Conversation entitled “One World, Many Voices: Internationalizing our Curricula and Seasons through Drama in Translation” and to a proposal by Dassia Posner to create an institute for theatrical translation at her university, Northwestern University.

While the ambitious plans for a National New Plays in Translation Network never came to fruition, the excited conversations of a decade ago have fed into many events and to a less formalized but nevertheless active network. The Theatre in Translation Network (TinT) has existed in the form of lively email and Zoom conversations, which bring together a wide range of people practicing or interested in theatrical translation. This group has deliberated over how best to disseminate the scripts of play translations—both how to inform people about all the translations that have been completed and especially produced and how to make those scripts available to others. The TinT website features a list of productions at theatres in the United States, available also as a searchable spreadsheet. We agreed that there’s no need for a more sophisticated database, given the increasing importance in US theatre practice of the New Play Exchange (NPX). Many translators have their scripts listed on the NPX, which now represents translators' work better with the addition of multiple author fields.

Marielle Heller, Kathryn Kates, Birgit Huppuch, Mike Caban, and Anna Gutto in Sa Ka La by Jon Fosse, translated and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde, produced by Oslo Elsewhere at 45 Bleecker Theatres . Scenic design by Jo Winarski. Lighting design by Paul Hudson. Costume design by Jennifer Caprio. Sound design by David Margolin Lawson. Props design by Kerry McGuire. Dramaturgy by Oda Radoor. Photo by Jim Baldassare.

Most recently, TinT‘s activity has taken the form of regular Zoom meetings during which members discuss issues that affect us (such as the omission of the translator’s name from lists of nominations for prizes), sometimes with invited guests, and workshop play translations in progress. We also continue to confer about how best to advocate for theatre translation, often responding to new developments. Thus when the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, we talked at length with member Sarah Cameron Sunde, who translated many of his plays in the 2000s. Those conversations led to a HowlRound TV event involving several of us, exploring the questions that guide all of us: “Why the American Theatre Needs Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse: A Roundtable on Bringing Plays in Translation to Our Stages,“ and to Amelia Parenteau’s conversation with Sarah: “On Translating Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse’s for American Audiences.”

While our efforts to promote plays in translation on stages in the United States have not transformed the landscape as much as we might have liked, we have achieved some success and remain committed to this work. Two of Neil’s translations will be produced in the coming season in Ithaca, New York and Washington, DC, and one of Adam’s translations of a play by the Chilean playwright Ramón Griffero was just published in Latin American Theatre Review. The need for the United States to be less insular, including in its theatre, persists, and we and our colleagues will continue to do all we can to foster more openness.