For all of the critics who claim poetry can’t and shouldn’t be translated, theater gets it worse. Take all of the logistical thresholds theater generally has to overcome – budgets, a local audience, available rehearsal and production spaces, a pool of talented actors, sets, lighting, design, sound, costumes – and add in the challenges of translating both a different culture as well as a few hours of spoken language.
It is significantly difficult that out of the many thousands of stage productions each year in the US, only about a dozen non-English playwrights are performed with any regularity. Records are hard to come by, but I attempted a one-city sample with the Chicago Theater Database. The list is deserving, but small: the Greeks, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Brecht, García Lorca, Ionesco, Molière, Sartre, Pirandello, Beckett, Calderón, Dario Fo, and a few others. But that isn’t to say it doesn’t work when put to the test – works of Ionesco, Beckett, Yasmina Reza and a new translation of Schiller all succeeded as “prestige shows” on Broadway last season.
So, producers: Want to bring fresh work to new audiences? Get at me – I’ve got a boatload of never-premiered-in-English classics with your name on it. Let’s talk Thomas Bernhard or Alfred Farag.
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Folio Found. 