Day of Translation 2020: The Translation of Theater

Rebekah Maggor is a translator, theatre director, and academic. She is Assistant Professor of Performance at Cornell University. Her research centers on political theatre and drama in translation, with an emphasis on recent Arabic drama from Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. She co-edited Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution (Seagull Books) and her forthcoming anthology, New Plays from Palestine: Theatre Between Home and Exile: co-edited with Marvin Carlson and Mas’ud Hamdan, will be published by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications. As a director, Maggor has staged her translations at venues across the U.S. including the Huntington Theatre Company, Golden Thread Theatre, PEN World Voices Festival, the Segal Theatre Centre, Harvard University, Cornell University and others. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Literature Fellowship in Translation), Fulbright Scholar Program, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation’s Theatre Communication Group Global Connections, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, among others.

 

 

Neil Blackadder is a translator of drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre, and recently retired from a 25-year career teaching theater at Knox College and Duke University. His translations of plays by Lukas Bärfuss, Ewald Palmetshofer, and Rebekka Kricheldorf have been produced in London, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, while many others by playwrights including Ferdinand Schmalz, Mishka Lavigne, Maxi Obexer, and Thomas Arzt have been published, and presented in staged readings. Neil is a co-founder of TinT, the Theatre in Translation network.

 

 

 

Caridad Svich first independent feature film (as co-screenwriter) Fugitive Dreams, based on her play, receives its world premiere at the 2020 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal and its US premiere at the 2020 Austin Film Festival. The film stars April Matthis, Robbie Tann, Scott Shepard, O-Lan Jones and David Patrick Kelly and is directed by Jason Neulander. She has received the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement, 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits, based on Isabel Allende’s novel, and NNPN rolling world premieres for RED BIKE and Guapa.  Her works in English and Spanish have been produced internationally. Other key plays in her repertoire include 12 Ophelias, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls, and The Way of Water. A significant body of her work focuses on human and environmental rights and the ‘fragile shores’ upon which many of us live. She also sustains a parallel career as a theatrical translator, chiefly known for her translations of the plays of Federico Garcia Lorca; she has also adapted for the stage works by Julia Alvarez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rosario Ferre, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; she is founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, and is associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review for Routledge UK. She is published by TCG, Methuen Drama, and Intellect UK, among others. Her most recent book is on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge 4th Wall Series). She is an alumna playwright of New Dramatists, member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and an affiliated artist with The Lark, New Georges and Woodshed Collective.   

 

Walter Chon

Walter Byongsok Chon is an Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies at Ithaca College. He served as dramaturg at the Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale School of Drama, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Great Plains Theater Conference, the Hangar Theatre, the Civic Ensemble, and the New York Musical Festival. His writings appeared in Theater, Praxis, The Korean National Theatre Magazine, The Korean Theatre Review, Asymptote, The Mercurian, The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, and the on-line magazine The Theatre Times, for which he is serving as a co-managing editor for South Korea. His produced theatrical translations include Sam-Shik Pai’s Inching Towards Yeolha (Korean to English) and Charles Mee’s True Love (English to Korean). He has presented at various conferences, including ATHE, ASTR, NeMLA, GSA, PTRS, MATC, and ALTA. Walter received his B.A. in English from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, M.A. in theatre studies from Washington University in St. Louis, M.F.A. in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Yale School of Drama, and D.F.A from Yale School of Drama.

Day of Translation has quickly turned into one of the core elements of our programming, a Day when we normally bring together a dozen writers and translators to George Mason’s campus for discussions on the art of literary translation. In previous years, we have also partnered with the wonderful Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco to produce this event. 

However, due to the pandemic, we have needed to adjust course and limit the scope of this year’s Day. Our thanks to all of those who continue to support our work in translation, and we look forward to hopefully supporting a full day of events next year.