Almiro Andrade is an actor and director with credits in film, TV and stage both in Brazil and in the UK. He holds three BA Hons in Modern Languages and Theatre Studies from Brazilian institutions, an MA in Making Plays: Writing and Devising for the Stage at Kingston University (2011), a Diploma in Screenwriting at the London Film Academy (2012), and he currently is working on his PhD at King’s College, looking at the translation and adaptation of Brazilian contemporary drama through devised performance. Recently, Almiro has become an Artistic Associate of StoneCrabs Theatre Company,designing courses for collaborative approaches to devised performance for their Young Directors Programme, has debuted as a dramaturg for Franko Figueiredo’s Tieta in 2015, and is currently working as director and translator at the project Namíbia, Não! UK, supported by the Arts Council England – The National Lottery Fund.
Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at King’s College London. She has published widely on Latin American culture, theatre and performance, and women’s writing and gender. She is a translator of Latin American theatre and poetry, and her most recent research is on the meeting places of translation and cultural history. She was a co-founder of Travesía. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, first published in 1992. From 2008 to 2012 she was the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded, ‘Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation: A Virtual Environment for Research and Practice’, better known as Out of the Wings (www.outofthewings.org). Her translation of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa asHouse of Desire was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2004 as part of its Spanish Golden Age Season, and has been performed internationally on a number of occasions since. In 2009, along with Sue Dunderdale and Karen Morash, she created the Head for Heights Theatre Company (www.headforheights.org.uk), dedicated to the performance of theatre from cultural extremes and marginality, and in 2011 the company premiered her translation of Las brutas / Beasts, by Chilean dramatist Juan Radrigán. In July 2016 she became Principal Investigator on the project ‘Language Acts and Worldmaking’ (www.languageacts.org/), funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Open World Research Initiative. The project explores language as a material and historical force that acts as the means by which individuals construct their personal, local, transnational and spiritual identities: worldmaking.
Kate Eaton is a translator, theatre practitioner and researcher. Previous translations and productions of Virgilio Piñera’s plays include The Wedding (in collaboration with Scarlet Theatre), Thin Man Fat Man, You Always Forget Something, False Alarm, Jesus and Electra Garrigó. The plays of Virgilio Piñera and the collaborative processes of translation for performance were the twin strands of her practice-led PhD (awarded from Queen Mary, University of London in 2012) entitled False Alarms and False Excursions: Translating Virgilio Piñera for Performance. She has been a member of the Out of the Wings Collective since 2016.
Trained at the Professional Acting Academy directed by Chilean National Theatre Award Fernando González. He has for many years worked as an actor at the Teatro Nacional Chileno, one of Chile’s most important theatres. He also works as a theatre director with other independent companies and is the founder and creative director of Teatro Manifesto. He has appeared in numerous national and international festivals. In parallel with his performance work, he pursues academic research into drama and has taught the subject at several academic institutions. He has come to the UK to expand his artistic knowledge through a MA and PhD at King’s College London.
Chilean performance and theatre director and researcher. She worked as a theatre director and actress in Santiago until she moved to London in 2010. In the UK she co-founded the collective 11:18, developing site-specific and audio-based performances taking place during real train journeys. Her work has been presented at Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil (Chile), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chile), Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (England), SPILL Festival of Performance (England), and Derry-Londonderry City of Culture (Northern Ireland). Currently she is a PhD Candidate at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the intersection between Chilean theatre and performance and their socio-political context. Her areas of interest are Latin American theatre and performance, performance studies, site-specific theatre and the politics of spectatorship.
Gigi began her theatre career with a scholarship to San Francisco’s New Conservatory Youth Theatre Company and School at age 14. She holds a BA in Drama from SFSU where she studied with movie musical legend Gene Nelson. Film: I’m In Love with a Church Girl, Colma: The Musical. Regional: Pal Joey, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Jekyl & Hyde The Musical, Anton In Show Business, Inspecting Carol. Las Vegas: The Christians. Bay Area: Rhinoceros, Cabaret, Oliver!, Happy Birthday, The King and I, Lend Me a Tenor, A Saloon at the Edge of the World (original cast). Gigi co-authored, choregraphed and performed in an original work, The Fashion Show, which enjoyed an extended run at The Marsh in San Francisco. She is a member of London’s Out of the Wings Collective where she translates and adapts the plays of Colombian author Rafael Guizado. Her translation of Scherzo (Dialogue Statue) was staged in Las Vegas presented by Cockroach Theatre Company.
More about Gigi here.
Trained as an actor at Drama Studio London and in Spain at the Escuela Navarra de Teatro, Pamplona. He began translating plays in 2003 with a translation of Springtime by Spanish playwright Julio Escalada, at the Finborough Theatre. Since then he has worked as a translator for the Royal Court, the RSC, the Young and Old Vic, the Tricycle and the Gate, and has had translations produced throughout the UK, with a production of Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón’s B premiering at the Royal Court in September 2017.
For the Royal Court, he has worked for over a decade not only as a translator but also as an advisor on many new writing projects with emerging theatre makers from throughout Spain and Latin America, most recently with a group of young Cuban playwrights on the Royal Court’s third programme in that country.
Overseas, his translations have been produced in the United States, India and Sri Lanka, and in 2017 his translation of Numbers, a Spanish play by Mar Gómez Glez about the European refugee crisis, will premiere in Germany. In the US, Manhattan’s Play Company will produce his translation of Guillermo Calderón’s Villa throughout March 2017.
As an actor, William worked mainly in theatre, on large and small-scale tours and at venues including the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, on productions including devised work and children’s and young people’s theatre as well as classics, new writing and workshopping. He also took part in the London Shakespeare Workout, working on Shakespeare and writing with inmates and former prisoners.
He joined Out of the Wings in 2014 and in 2016 was one of the key team-members in organising the OOTW2016 week of play readings. With long-standing links to Spain, he is a regular visitor to the theatre community in Madrid and advocates for increased visibility in the UK of international theatre and performance. In 2016 he worked with international theatre company [Foreign Affairs] as a mentor on ‘FA Translates!’, a programme for translators working in theatre, where he advised and assisted in the devising and running of practical workshops as well as giving detailed one-to-one mentorship to the programme’s participants. He is also the translation editor of the online theatre journal, The Theatre Times.
Originally from the fishing port of Grimsby in the north of England, he is now based in London and has live in Battersea since 2008.
He can be found online on williamgregory.co.uk and tweets as @wjg22.
Gwen MacKeith is a writer and translator of fiction, poetry and theatre from Spain and Spanish America, and a fiction editor for the arts quarterly, Ambit magazine.
Her translation of Los Siameses/Siamese Twins, by Griselda Gambaro (1928-), was performed and published by Oberon books in 2011.
Gwen worked on the creation of the Out of the Wings project between 2008 and 2012.
Peruvian actor, director and teacher living in London. Sergio trained as an actor at the Atlantic Acting School in New York, and has worked for theatre companies like Plan 9 in Lima, Pipeline in New York and Front of House in London. He’s currently a member of the London Neo Futurists and the Spanish Theatre Company as well as the OOTW collective. His latest work on stage includes Una Historia de Poliamor, Blood Wedding and I’s Winkle. Sergio is currently working on a devised piece for the Rosemary Branch theatre to open in April 2017.
Sophie Stevens is a researcher, theatre translator and practitioner. She recently completed her PhD entitled Uruguayan Theatre in Translation: Performability, Mobility and Intercultural Dialogue. Her recent collaborations include; Blackboard Theatre Company, Pedro and the Captain (Vaults Festival, 2016), Arcola Youth Theatre, Translation Plays: Intercultural Workshops (Arcola, 2015) and King’s Cultural Institute Collaborative Innovation Scheme (2014/15). She has completed translations into English of dramatic texts (most recent; The Library, Dancing Alone Every Night, Semicolon) and she contributes to the Out of the Wings research group at King’s College London.
CURTIS RUSSELL, originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, is pursuing a PhD in Theatre at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and holds an M.A. in Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. His research interests include musical theatre, film, contemporary Chilean theatre, British and European theatre and performance, national theatres, and pop culture. Curtis is a playwright, lyricist/librettist, dramaturg, critic, and translator. His translations of Chilean plays have been performed in London (King’s Head Theatre) and New York City (LaMicro Theater Company). His play The Zion Curtain played in the University of Utah’s Studio 115; he also co-wrote the original musical Pomp and Circumstance for the university’s Musical Theatre Program. Curtis has been published in Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy and Latin American Theatre Review. He studied with playwright Juan Radrigán in Chile in 2013, and is managing editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre.
Mary Ann Vargas worked as an actor, director and translator in Lima before immigrating to the UK. Based in London, she continues to work with important theatre companies in Latin America. Her latest adaptation for the stage has been a version for young audiences of William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (2015, Teatro La Plaza, Lima).
