Download Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation: A Virtual

Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation: A Virtual
Environment for Research and Practice
Case for Support
This project seeks to provide the English-language theatre professional
– critic, historian, practitioner – with a range and quality of access to Spanishlanguage theatre that is fit for professional purpose. A ‘virtual Spanishlanguage theatre environment’, designed to emulate a ‘real’ theatre
environment – that is, the body of knowledge that informs and sustains
professional practice within a specific culture - will be configured by the
creation and digital storage of a series of ‘knowledges’ of the drama, the
theatre traditions, and the performance methodologies and theories that have
developed in the Hispanic world since the 17th century. The resulting
website/database will, in its first phase at least, be structured around the three
key areas and moments of Spanish-language theatre – the Spanish Golden
Age, modern Spain, and Spanish America.
The resource will be established through a corpus of around 100 plays
in each area. Each play will be contextualized through synopsis, sample
translation, production notes, critical responses and performance history. This
will enable users to reach an informed decision as to the ‘utility’ of any
particular play to the projects in which they are engaged. Users will have at
their disposal a rigorously investigated and carefully contextualized resource
that, in this way, is centrally concerned to enable the production and further
dissemination of theatre writing, research and practice.
The sustainability of such a resource is key. In this case, the
sustainability of the website/database is integral to the nature, indeed the
ethos, of the project itself. A group of contributors and editors will be
established in the early stages of the project, initially to act as a pilot user
community, latterly to ensure the continuing development of the resource.
Within the specific scope of this project, the resource will be used to
develop a series of approaches both to issues of writing translations for
performance, and of performing plays in translation. In that way, the project
will lead to further outputs by way of traditional academic publications and
symposia, and of productions.
Research Questions or Problems
Theatre practitioners and scholars have access to a number of webbased resources linked to Spanish theatre. All of these are incomplete (this is
true even in the case of the most apparently specialist sites, such as that of
the Centro Latinoamericano de Creación e Investigación www.celcit.org.ar or
the comedia websites hosted by the AHCT, or by Matthew Stroud at
http://www.trinity.edu.org/comedia/), and now appear static. Crucially too, they
lack contextualization. In terms of the resource it will provide, this project
presents Spanish theatre as a cultural practice, privileging performance and
the potential for performance over textual recording. The primary problem in
this regard is the creation of a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
knowledges blend to present Spanish theatre as a cultural practice embedded
in cultural history, change and memory. The reception group for this project
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will be both, in the words of Stanley Fish, ‘an interpretive community’, and one
that interacts with the resource, providing feedback, bringing new
perspectives and knowledge to bear. In other words, the resource will be
framed in such a way as to invite interpretation, interaction and, ultimately,
creative and scholarly use.
In order to facilitate such interpretation, the focus of this project will be
not solely on what may be, or has been, performed, but also, crucially, upon
the means of achieving that performance. This goes beyond the standard
accoutrements of the mise-en-scene, important though these elements are in
terms of complementing user knowledge. In the case of playtexts translated
from another place and, in most cases, from other times, performance is
clearly conditioned both by the signs and systems of another theatre culture,
and by the process of translation itself - specifically by how that process is
conceptualized by the translator (here the whole panoply of labels from
‘translation’ to ‘adaptation’ to ‘new version out of…’ all denote different, if as
yet poorly defined, translation praxes). Integral to the project therefore are:
 investigation into the theatre practices that contextualize the original
plays;
 study of the process of moving the plays from their source culture into
a target culture that will, in the first instance at least, be that of the
English-speaking world.
In addition to the establishment of this enabling resource, with the
attendant issues of how our corpus will be selected, how it will be
contextualized, and how it will best mobilise its own active user-community,
the project will explore the following research questions that arise from the
issues noted above:
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Cultural Awareness and Transmission: how might the
repertoire of English-language theatre be enriched by this
resource? Following on from initial but generalized studies by
Aaltonen: 2001 and Andermann: 2006, the project investigates
the issues that prompt one theatrical culture to import plays from
another? How do those imports profile and expand the receiving
culture, in terms of both practice and criticism? Even a quick
overview of performance criticism of Spanish-language plays in
English reveals that writers are much more willing to consider
them as being more culturally ‘other’ than plays from, for
example, France, Germany, Greece, or Italy;
Reception: how does an audience react to a play in translation?
Using the notion of ‘conceptual blending’ (Fauconnier and
Turner: 2004), the project will assess how the sort of textual
hybridity that emerges from the intercultural and intertemporal
practices of stage translation develops or inhibits reception;
Translation and Performance: what scope is there for
asserting a model of performability as a key value of the
translation process? Very specifically, the project will look at
polemical issues such as ‘literal’ translation, and will address
these through developing methodologies for cultural and
linguistic negotiation. In short, it considers translation as a
hermeneutic act, and interrogates it as such.
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
Historiography and Historicity: in what ways might the recreative strategies of a translation process alive to the historicity
of cultural memory (following on from Mieke Bal et al) both
complement traditional theatre historiography and enable the
development of the ‘foreign’ Lope, Calderón etc (by analogy with
Kennedy’s ‘foreign’ Shakespeare)?
The project therefore questions and will revise descriptive and productbased analyses of the role of translation in theatre. It recognises and
addresses the need to develop models for understanding both the translation
process, and in particular the strategies for embedding performativity into the
translator’s practice, and the ways in which translated texts position
themselves within the receiving theatre culture.
Research Context
The project finds its immediate context in the Royal Shakespeare
Company’s multi-award winning season The Spanish Golden Age (2004-05).
All three investigators worked on this season as academic advisors, with
Johnston and Boyle writing the translations for two of the plays (The Dog in
the Manger and House of Desires). In April 2005 a symposium on Language
and Meaning in the Staging of Golden Age Drama in English was held at
King’s College, London. It was notable for its unusual mix of theatre
practitioners and scholars. This same creative fusion is evident in the edited
volume of essays The Spanish Golden Age in English; Perspectives on
Performance that derived from that symposium and which is currently in press
with Oberon (who published the four plays that made up the RSC season).
This experience – perhaps one of the most successful collaborations
ever between academics and theatre practitioners – afforded the opportunity
for the exploration of key issues of translation and reception. These in turn
formed the basis of the symposium and the book, and were further developed
in subsequent symposia, held in King’s in January 2007, and scheduled for
the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London, in November 2007.
All three investigators were deeply involved with the creative, the audiencebased, and the reflective/academic strands of activity that together configured
the RSC season. The process opened up an important space for collaboration
between the academy and theatre practice, and initiated a successful working
methodology that our subsequent activities have sought to build upon.
The impact of the season has been felt in a number of inter-related
ways in both the ambit of professional theatre and the academic world.
Johnston’s and Boyle’s translations have been revived both nationally and
internationally – principally in the United States - and there is now an incipient
sense among Hispanists of the ‘foreign Lope’, for example. Evidence for this
comes from a variety of sources. Although not a traditional Lope scholar, for
example, Johnston has, unusually, been invited to contribute to the
prestigious Companion to Lope de Vega (to be published in 2008 by Tamesis)
and all three investigators have contributed essays to The Comedia in English
(eds Donald Larson and Susan Paun García, to be published in 2007, also by
Tamesis).
However, two fundamental impediments occur. On one hand, while
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there is a clear hunger within British and American theatre for Spanishlanguage plays in general, there is insufficient resource to undertake the
enormously expensive process of research and development that was carried
out by the RSC. The result is that the repertoire of Spanish-language plays
performed in English remains static, while, by the same token, the range and
quality of informed debate as to the new potentialities offered by the
performance of these plays in English is inhibited. Furthermore, at the level of
criticism, the need to understand the process of translation, as it embeds itself
into the here and now of performance, tends to be neglected in favour of a
text-based criticism that ignores the contexts of performance that are defining
elements of theatre. This project seeks to address both of these impediments
by creating an inter-active and continuously renewing catalogue of Spanishlanguage theatre that is contextualized culturally, historically and
conceptually.
The broader context to the project lies in the work of the three
investigators. By different routes, they have developed a knowledge base and
critical expertise that covers the three areas of theatre production in the
Hispanic World: Thacker through his work on the history of performance in the
Spanish Golden Age and the history of the comedia, Johnston through his
acclaimed translations of both Golden Age and modern Spanish-language
drama, and his theoretical work on translation and performance, and Boyle
through her work on methodologies for the study of performance, cultural
transmission, and the translation of Latin American theatre.
The context for the ‘virtual theatre environment’ is rooted in the theatre
language of both modern Spain and Spanish America, where key practitioners
such as García Lorca in Spain and the pioneers of modern drama in Spanish
America saw the need to create ‘un ambiente teatral’, a theatre environment
that would serve to modernize the dramatic art in their countries, create
artistic and intellectual awareness of, and dialogue with, international theatre,
both classical and modern, and develop from that a recognized professional
theatre and real stagecraft. In order to achieve this, they collected and
performed plays from the international canon, introducing audiences to them
and ‘training’ them in the means of understanding and appreciating this
variety of theatrical experience. This process of building such a theatre
environment is deeply rooted in research, practice and dissemination in ways
that this project seeks to emulate.
Research Methods
This project will assess the issues and questions raised above through
a programme of collaborative research. At all times the research process will
derive from the database, although we anticipate that the database will also
excite new research that will inform and inflect the process we are setting out
here. This process is rooted in detailed analysis of translation as a complex
theatre practice involving:
 programming (choice of text);
 process (table work and rehearsal-room practice);
 reception (encompassing significantly different end-users);
 criticism.
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The core ethos of the project is that practice and theory are mutually
illuminating, while its core methodology centres on the related ideas of
translation as a creative process and the commensurability of cultures (in
particular, of course, of theatre cultures). There is much key work that will be
taken into account here (for the former idea, from thinkers as distinct as
Wittgenstein and Derrida, for the latter from cultural theorists such as Iser and
Buddick), and much of the early work of the team will be to integrate that work
into a coherent model of analysis upon which this project will be predicated.
By working closely with a network of theatres (both building and
company-based) the team will assess the processes by which foreignlanguage plays are programmed (which, as yet, account for only around 15%
of professional productions in Great Britain: source Theatre Record). A
particularly exciting aspect of this project is that it promises to reach new
insights into how foreign-language plays are perceived by theatre practitioners
and audiences alike. A series of performances and rehearsed readings will be
closely monitored – through observation, post-production interviews, and
questionnaires – allowing for a multiplicity of views to be folded into a holistic
analysis of the experience and perceptions of ‘foreignness’ in general, and in
particular how Spanish-language theatre culture challenges the expectations
of theatre practitioners and audiences in the English-speaking world.
In this way, the project will not only enrich our knowledge of how
translation functions as a writing practice but also of how it influences the
conditions of its own reception in the cultural practice of theatre-making. The
project thus offers an opportunity to make a telling contribution to issues that
are centre-stage in current translation and performance studies, as well as
fostering ever closer relations between the world of professional theatre and
academic Hispanism.
Project Management
The project is designed as a three-year collaboration, managed by
Boyle as PI, in conjunction with the expertise of the Centre for Computing in
the Humanities at King’s College. She will liaise with Johnston and Thacker
who, respectively, will manage their own centres. Each centre will have its
own postdoctoral research assistant who will be responsible for:
 selecting information and inputting it into the website/database;
 ensuring and monitoring the inter-activity sponsored and
enabled by the website;
 undertaking preliminary research into specific research
questions, as appropriate to existing expertise within each
centre, to be disseminated as set out below.
The PDRAs will be appointed six months into the project, once the
knowledge structure of the electronic resource has been established, and
modes and processes of inputting agreed, and will begin work on populating
the database and website created by the King’s team. One PhD student will
be appointed at the outset so that s/he is given ample opportunity to variously
exploit and extend the team’s knowledge base, theoretical expertise, and
practical skills. Members will be expected to work as a team and there will be
a constant exchange of information and experience between the three
centres. This will be enabled electronically, through a research portal that will
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be established at the beginning of the project, and by a series of scheduled
meetings and symposia. After initial training and induction meetings, held in
London, quarterly review meetings will be held on a rotating basis to monitor
progress in the light of clearly defined research objectives and milestones.
The Technical Director will oversee the work of the TRS, who will
develop the entire technical framework for the project as described in the TA.
Prior to
application
Team has organised three symposia:
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An encounter between practitioners and academic
theorists to assess the validity of the methodology of the
RSC Spanish Golden Age Season, leading to the
publication of a co-edited volume
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A consultation with targeted users of the database
resource – practitioners and academics
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A conference on translation as process geared to
performance, with participation of leading international
theorists (Aaltonen, Kennedy, inter alia)
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Advisory group established, comprising international
scholars with relevant expertise. This advisory group
will also act as referees and co-editors for further
volumes.
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Network of practitioners formalised, comprising leading
theatre companies (inter alia RSC, National Theatre,
Lyric Belfast, Edinburgh Traverse Theatre), trainers and
educational programmes (RADA, Drama at Queen’s
University) and theatre publishers (Oberon, London and
Caos Editorial, Madrid)
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User community established
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PDRAs appointed, trained and, under supervision of the
three investigators, identify textual corpora and input
twenty items each
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PhD student appointed
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First phase of database established.
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Investigation of corpus in relation to translation, users,
performance and reception contexts
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Launch, with first workshop, involving three
investigators, PDRAs, key practitioners
1-12 months
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end of Year 1
13-24 months
end of Year 2
-
3 rehearsed readings planned
-
Network of relationships formed and functioning as
pilot body for website and database
-
Methodology of database identified, piloted and 20% of
corpus published electronically
-
3 rehearsed readings take place and analysed
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Selected research adapted for publication as articles and
essays
-
Individual monographs begun
-
Database expanded to include human resources
(translators, practitioners etc)
-
International Symposium on Translation and
Performance 1: Reception and Textual Hybridity
organized and hosted in London. Co-edited refereed
volume of essays shaped from this conference
-
doctoral thesis begun
-
Full implementation of interactive aspects of project
website
-
3 further rehearsed readings planned
-
International symposium on Translation and
Performance 2: Historiography and Historicity
organized and hosted in Oxford Co-edited refereed
volume of essays shaped from this conference
-
Volume of essays published
-
3 rehearsed readings take place and analysed
-
Publication of annotated playtexts
-
Further contextualization and expansion of database
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25-36 months
-
1 performance takes place and analysed
-
Publication of annotated playtexts
- Volume of essays published
end of Year 3
Post application
-
International Symposium on Translation and
Performance 3: The Grammars of Performance
organized and hosted in Belfast. Co-edited refereed
volume of essays shaped from this conference
-
Individual monographs completed
-
Database completed
- PhD completed - Doctoral student presents paper at symposium
-
1 performances take place and analysed
-
Publication of annotated playtexts
- Further contextualization and expansion of database
- Volume of essays published
- Project evaluated
- Community of contributors confirmed
- Monographs published
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