Periodically we’ll write on works for the stage. Folio Found was named for a book of plays after all.
New translated theater is rare enough that it deserves special notice. Enjoy by Toshiki Okada, trans. Aya Ogawa, has extended its run through May 1. Presented at 59E59 in New York, the play has received strong reviews and (not to sound like an ad) offers an incredible $5 student rush ticket policy.
In the New Yorker:
Toshiki Okada’s play, about part-time workers at a Tokyo manga café, is a delightful study in frustration. Anecdotes are eagerly introduced, then derail before arriving at a point. Ideas are overexplained into incoherence. Ambition dissolves in a nervous laugh. This is the first production of an Okada play not directed by the playwright himself, and the first one performed in English. He put his work in good hands: the director, Dan Rothenberg, displays an acute understanding of Okada’s experiments with movement and shifting perspective, Aya Ogawa’s brilliant translation meets the challenge of finding an English equivalent for Okada’s highly colloquial Japanese, and the actors are wonderfully loose and nimble. In short, it’s a treat.
The Play Company, dedicated to “an international view of contemporary playwriting,” does phenomenal work year after year. Their translation program takes particular care to highlight the distinction between academic translation and translation intended for the stage:
The U.S. lags behind other countries in translating foreign work, and our exposure to production texts is limited. Many American translations come from the academic world and, while useful for study, are not suitable for professional performance.
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Folio Found. 