On Tuesday 4 March, the Performance Research Hub, in collaboration with the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre, hosted a scratch night of translated drama. A team of actors staged three extracts of plays translated into English, and had a lively conversation about the methods of translating drama for performance.
The first play was Personation; or, Fairly Taken In, translated by Marie Thérèse De Camp from Michel Dieulafoy’s French Défiance et Malice; ou Le Prêté Rendu (‘Defiance and Malice; or, the Loan Repaid’, 1801). De Camp first translated and adapted this play in 1805; the Performance Research Hub Co-Ordinator Dr Helen Dallas is producing an edited digital edition of this version of the play, which currently only exists in manuscript form, for Taylor Editions. The Co-Ordinators of the Performance Hub (Helen Dallas) and OCCT (Mary Katherine Newman) took on the parts of Lord Henry and Lady Julia respectively.
The second piece was an extract of Hugo Spritz with a Twist, Patience Haggin’s translation of Margherita Monga’s Italian Hugo—burla veronese (‘Hugo – a Veronese practical joke’), which in 2014 won a special citation from the Premio Hystrio Scritture di Scena, a national contest for playwrights under 35. The play is a black comedy satirising modern life, rich in disaffected characters, witty dialogue, and subversive uses of the theatrical canon, including Shakespeare. The cast and audience had great fun with the comedic messiness of the social interactions between the self-interested group of friends.
Our final performance was taken from Dr Minna Jeffery’s translation of Minna Canth’s Finnish Kovan onnen lapsia (1888), Children of Misfortune. The play is about a group of manual labourers employed to build a new railway line. They are made redundant with no notice and with no possibility of finding alternative work over the difficult winter season, and, after retaliating against their employers, are pursued by law enforcement. The extract we staged saw the four men discussing the injustice of the law, and contemplating ways of forcing a redistribution of resources. In its own time, the play was considered so radical that it was banned after its first performance; those present at the scratch night, however, were eager to see the full play as soon as possible!
Huge thanks are due to the fantastic actors Laura Barnes, Gilon Fox, and Sivasruthi Kesavan, and to the translators who shared their work with us. We hope we can see Hugo Spritz with a Twist and Children of Misfortune onstage soon!
Performance Research Hub
