Coming soon! We preview the #OOTW2024 Festival

It’s July and the 2024 Out of the Wings Festival is fast approaching. It’s the eighth annual festival for OOTW and the flagship event of our year. Whether it’s your eighth time around like it is for us, or whether you’ve never been to any of our events before, here’s a quick run-down of what’s going on from July 16 to 20 this year, and how you can get involved.

We open #OOTW2024 with the Out of the Wings Forum. Entitled Worldmaking on Stage: Theatre Translation and Future-Making, the Forum brings together researchers, practitioners, translators and theatre-makers at King’s College London for a day of discussion and exploration of themes of theatre translation and international cultural exchange.

The Forum has been part of OOTW’s activities for several years, and is intended as an open space for anyone interested in theatre translation to come together and share ideas. This year’s Forum will take place at King’s College London, and is organised in collaboration with Translation@Goldsmiths and Language Acts and Worldmaking.

Sophie Stevens and Catherine Boyle welcome participants to the OOTW Forum in 2023

Taking place throughout the day on July 16, the #OOTW2024 Forum will feature a round-table on ‘The Future Journey of a Play’, a focus on theatre in translation from Ukraine, and a panel of case studies in theatre translation research and practice. The Forum is free to attend, and lunch is provided. To sign-up, click here.

We then move to Omnibus Theatre in Clapham, OOTW’s home-from-home since 2019, for the first of five evenings of play readings. Since 2016, the OOTW Festival has showcased new English translations of plays from around Ibero-America, presenting a new piece each night, and including some double bills of shorter works.

The #OOTW2024 play-readings commence on Tuesday July 16 with a play from Argentina, Volcano of the Witches, and continue all week with State of Vegetation (from Chile, July 17), On the Other Side of the Sea (from El Salvador, July 18), Tropical Pharaoh and The Treasure of the Llanganates (from Brazil and Ecuador, July 19), and Silvia K’s Last Stand (from Spain, July 20).

The plays are all presented in English, as script-in-hand readings, by a company of actors cast especially for the festival. The translations are all UK premieres. Our goal with the readings is to platform this exciting work, and in previous years we have seen some of the plays go on to be produced elsewhere (at venues such as Theatre503, Baron’s Court Theatre or Asylum Theatre, Las Vegas), or published by presses such as Bloomsbury or Inti Press.

Elena Sanz, Carly Fernández and Ángel López-Silva at perform at the 2022 OOTW Festival. Photograph by Terry Cripps.

With publishing as a big part of OOTW’s work, July 16 also sees the opening at Omnibus of our annual theatre in translation booksale with our publishing partner, Inti Press. The book sale features a selection of plays from previous OOTW festivals, as well as other titles of plays in translation from publishers such as Oberon Books and Methuen Drama. The pop-up bookstore is located in the Omnibus bar, and is open every evening throughout the festival.

The OOTW and Inti Press pop-up bookstore is open!

We also aim at OOTW to offer opportunities for translators actively to develop their practice during Festival week through hands-on workshops. #OOTW2024 is no exception: on Saturday July 20, the final day of the Festival, we will be offering a free workshop, Working through Theatre Translation: Practice and Strategies. Facilitated by members of the OOTW collective, this workshop is open to anyone with an interest in developing as a theatre translator, whether as a newcomer or a more experienced practitioner. For details and booking, click here.

Playwright Mónica Maffía leading a translation workshop at OOTW 2023

So, the full line-up again: the #OOTW2024 Forum on July 16 at King’s College London; play-readings from July 16 to 20 at Omnibus Theatre; our pop-up bookstore with Inti Press at Omnibus all week; and a closing workshop, also at Omnibus, on July 20. And of course, many a chance to mingle with fellow translators, theatre-makers, and other friends and colleagues, every evening at the Omnibus bar. Cheers!

We look forward to welcoming you to our festival! For more information about OOTW, keep an eye on our website, join our mailing list, or check out our socials.