Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2011

The core of this article engages with the field of dramaturgical translation. It is based, apart from the theoretical and practical substructure, on an extensive field research of contemporaneous German dramaturgy over the last decade. The article investigates major current approaches to inter-lingual and inter- and intra-cultural, as well as inter-theatrical translation designated for the performance of 'texts', from conventional dramatic plays to extra-dramatic script-materials, in an age of collisions, convergence and synergies between text-based and post-dramatic dramaturgies. The approaches range between the poles of adhering to a reductionist fidelity to the work's interpretive options, and devising orientations based on the dramaturg's own environment, biography and ideology and, not least, on the dramaturg's direct involvement in the rehearsal/conception process as 'spect-actor' and co-director. The central argument is thus that the closed traditional approaches of textual dramaturgy are challenged by the open-ended and autogenic dramaturgy of the self, or the dramaturg-as-text. These contentions are, inter alia, demonstrated through Feridun Zaimoglu's 'translation' (in fact, rewriting) of Shakespeare's Othello into a blatant German-Turkish argot for Luk Perceval's production, which manifested the 'otherness' of migrating populations as experienced by the dramaturg himself; and Castorf and Hegemann's imagistic, hybrid and theatrical-event-conscious adaptation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire as Endstation Amerika at the East-Berlin Volksbühne, turning the piece from a psychological character drama into a nostalgic satire on the creators, actors and implied spectators, all of whom are subliminally defined by the production as non adjusting 'exiled' East-German ex-communists.

This article explores the historical neglect of translation as a consideration in the study and practice of theatre in the United States and Europe. While the study of literature is fairly strictly divided between English-language and Comparative Literature departments, theatre and drama have shown little concern about language as a barrier to reception of the dramatic text. Arguably, this discrepancy may be traced to a fundamental gap between the perceived status of the novel as a completed work of art and the playtext as work of art in progress, waiting to find its completion in performance.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl, a critically acclaimed graphic narrative of 2002, was adapted for the stage in 2010. This article considers the medium-based slippage and enhancement that occurred when the original was reworked in terms of a materially different genre. The use of graphic material as source seems to be on the rise (Broadway's Spiderman being an obvious example) and the use of electronic media is increasingly available to theatre artists of even modest financial means. Therefore, the 'migration and transformation of discursive elements between different discourses' - Clem Robyns's definition of translation, and his understanding of discourse to mean an entire medium as langue - deserves attention as a site of critical enquiry in theatre, performance and translation studies; it comes into sharp focus in this project. As Kate Sturge writes:

In the last decade theatre criticism witnessed a development in space studies that helped transform 'landscape theory' into a research area. The fact that any translational process involves interpretation and adaptation from a viewpoint, and that theory implies a situational perspective, elicits reflections on these two interactive concepts. This article reflects upon related theoretical models and methodologies - ecocriticism, spatial theory, phenomenology, Walter Benjamin's concept of reading between the lines - in parallel with the actual translation of Christopher Hampton's Savages (1973) into a Portuguese playtext/performance text produced at Lisbon's Centro Cultural de Belém in 2003.

Director Tim Supple's British Council-funded production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (2006) was a pan-Indian and Sri Lankan spectacular. Working with performers from a diversity of sub-continental cultural, linguistic, socio-economic and performance backgrounds, Supple created a boldly physical adaptation of Shakespeare that toured globally for three years. Drawing on intercultural and postcolonial theory, this article tackles both the potentially productive working models and the potentially uncomfortable power dynamics arising from Supple's production. A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed in eight different languages: a fact that allowed it to operate intraculturally and to guard a sense of place in an international arena. The sexual and violent nature of its staging, however, lead to troubling Orientalist interpretations in global touring contexts. In thinking through the effects of these two key dramaturgical choices, this article works towards a pragmatics of best intercultural practice without eliding the socio-political ramifications of cross-cultural exchange.

Adopting and adapting musicology's use of affect theories, specifically Jeremy Gilbert's idea of an 'affective analysis' and David Epstein's idea of 'shaping affect', this article looks at Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life from a practitioner's perspective. It investigates the challenges and benefits of adopting an 'affective approach' to directing recent theatre texts that stress the musicality and corporeality of language along with, and at times above, its signifying roles. Rather than locating Aristotelian dramatic climaxes based on narratological or characterological progression, an affective approach seeks to identify moments of affective intensity, which produce a different sort of impact by working on a 'body-first' methodology, rather than the directly cerebral. That this embodied impact is not ultimately meaningless is one of affect theory's most vital assertions. This approach has resonance in terms of how directors, performers and critics/theorists approach work of this type.

THE ART OF TRANSLATION, RANJIT BOLT (2010) London: Oberon Books, 58pp., ISBN: 978-1-84002-865-2, h/bk, £9.99

STAGING AND PERFORMING TRANSLATION: TEXT AND THEATRE PRACTICE, ROGER BAINES, CRISTINA MARINETTI AND MANUELA PERTEGHELLA (EDS) (2011) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 277 pp., ISBN 978-0-230-22819-1, h/bk, £55.00

SHAKESPEARE AND THE PROBLEM OF ADAPTATION, MARGARET JANE KIDNIE (2008) London and New York: Routledge, 216 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-30868-7, p/bk, £20.99

THE PROCESS OF DRAMATURGY. A HANDBOOK, SCOTT R. IRELAN, ANNE FLETCHER AND JULIE FELISE DUBINER (2010) Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 150 pp., ISBN: 978-1-58510-332-4, p/bk, $ 16.95

TOWARD A DRAMATURGICAL SENSIBILITY. LANDSCAPE AND JOURNEY, GEOFFREY S. PROEHL, DD KUGLER, MARK LAMOS AND MICHAEL LUPU (2008) Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 241 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8386-4112-5, h/bk, $52.50