TRANSLATION THEMED WORKSHOPS
· Translating Tiny Tales – 3rd July / 2-5pm (Africa Centre, Great Suffolk Street)
© Image by Peter Till
This three hour practical, creative workshop, led by director Gráinne Byrne, assisted by translator Kate Eaton, welcomes theatre-practitioners and drama students who are fascinated by the myriad processes of collaborative theatre-making, adaptation and translation. We will be playing with the Spanish Language originals and Kate’s English translations of three absurdist micro-stories by Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera. The stories, Insomnia, Swimming and Mountain are each barely more than 100 words long and are miracles of compression. We shall discover how we can take these tiny tales into theatrical territory as we push and pull the texts around and play with form until we have transformed the stories into shapes that are strange and new whilst at the same time strangely familiar.
Gráinne Byrne is a Teaching Fellow in Theatre Practices at GSA in the University of Surrey. She teaches Acting on the MA Acting course, she directs on the BA Acting course and she is the Programme Leader of the MA Creative Practices and Direction course. She is an actor and director and for twenty years she was the artistic director of the highly acclaimed international touring company Scarlet Theatre that brought together actors writers and designers to make innovative theatre, “If you like imaginative theatre, these are your women” Time Out.
Kate Eaton is a translator, scholar and actor. In 2003 she translated Virgilio Piñera’s The Wedding in collaboration with Scarlet Theatre and she has subsequently translated other Piñera plays including Thin Man Fat Man, You Always Forget Something, False Alarm, Jesus and Electra Garrigó. She is a member of the Out of the Wings collective.
· Translating into the body – 4th July / 2-5pm (Flying Fantastic, Union Yard Arches)
© Image by Bettine Solf
This workshop will use aerial skills and games to explore ideas related to identity, multilingualism, migration and translation through the body in motion.
Target participants: actors, directors and interested parties.
Maximum capacity: 9 participants
Born in Peru, Chusi Amorós is a dancer, circus performer and theatre maker, based in London. Her work seeks an active audience across a variety of narratives, with a particular interest in immersive and cross-sensory experiences. Her passion for movement and devising has led her to work with many interdisciplinary artists and companies in both Lima and London.
Her background in aerial dance is the reason for her obsession with the use of verticality in space.
· Staging Translation – 5th July / 2-5pm(Jerwood Centre, Union Street)
© Out of the Wings 2016
This three-hour workshop is aimed at directors with an interest in creating work that was not originally written in English. It will be an in-depth and practical exploration of the relationship between the director and translator, including discussions such as cultural specificity of language, geographical setting and its impact on set design, and the role of the translator in the rehearsal room.
It will begin with a discussion session led by William Gregory, who has translated works for the Royal Court and Gate Theatre, amongst many others. Together we’ll go through the ways in which a translator can be involved throughout the production process, debunking some myths and looking at how their presence in the rehearsal room differs from that of a playwright. The second half of the workshop will put some of these ideas into practise through a case study. We’ll zoom in on a moment from a play and look at how decisions the translator has made will reverberate within a text, and how their involvement in the dramaturgy of a production can open up a deeper understanding of cross-cultural questions and new creative possibilities.
No prior experience with foreign-language texts is required, and you do not have to speak any other language. Although the session will be run by members of Out of the Wings, issues discussed will be relevant to texts translated from any language. All you need to bring is a keen interest in creating cross-cultural work, and questions from your own experience or productions you have seen.
Theatre translator William Gregory has translated over 130 plays, many of them for new writing workshops at the Royal Court. His recent work includes B by Guillermo Calderón (Royal Court), Villa, also by Calderón (PlayCo, New York), I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep Than Some Other Arsehole by Rodrigo García (Gate, London; Théâtre Excentrique, Sydney), and Chamaco and Weathered by Abel González Melo (HOME, Manchester). Director Kate O’Connor trained with Philippe Gaulier, and as Assistant Director to Zoe Svendsen (METIS), Christopher Haydon (Gate) and Marcello Magni (Complicite). She acts as Director with Frozen Light, and has directed work at Ovalhouse, CPT, Hoxton Hall, Theatre in the Mill, Nottingham Playhouse, ALRA, the Edinburgh Fringe and for national tours. She has been Associate Director on METIS’ World Factory and in the West End, and a Researcher on Lola Arias’ Minefield.
ONE DAY FORUM FOR THEATRE PRACTITIONERS
Friday 6th July 2018, James Clerk Maxwell Building, G14,
King’s College London, 57 Waterloo Road, London, SE1 8WA
Co-organised by Out of the Wings, Language Acts and Worldmaking,
and Goldsmiths, University of London
© Out of the Wings 2016
