Five Plays To Be Translated At A One Of A Kind Artist Retreat From Playwrights' Workshop Montreal

From June 12 to 22, Playwrights' Workshop Montreal (PWM), in partnership with the Cole Foundation, and with the support of donations made in memory of the great Canadian theatre artist, Bill Glassco, will host the 16th edition of the Glassco Translation Residency. Unique in the country, the retreat which takes place in the historic Fletcher Cottage, in breathtaking Tadoussac, Qu bec, gives translators time, space, and dramaturgical support to translate a play. The translators and playwrights are paired for ten days under the same magical roof to discuss and explore the universe of the play as it is being translated.

This year's residency welcomes five Canadian plays that will be translated into three different languages that include English, French, and Tagalog.

After a successful run at Gateway Theatre with its Cantonese translation (2016 Glassco Translation Residency), A Taste of Empire will be translated from English into Tagalog by promising Vancouver-based theatre artist Carmela Sison. The Tagalog translation, Lasang Imperyo, will connect the growing Filipino community in Canada to this exciting contemporary theatrical performance.

Nadine Desrochers will translate from French into English Marilyn Perreault's Fiel (Venom), the third play in a triptych produced by Th tre I.N.K. Known for their imaginative and visually engaging productions, Th tre I.N.K. is committed to sharing their work with the rest of Canada. To this end, Nadine and Marilyn are working on a performative English version of this multimedia acrobatic piece that is descriptively demanding and poetically engaging.

A previous participant in the residency, Leanna Brodie will be translating Gilles Poulin Denis' Dehors into English. The translated play is one of six that the Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver has chosen to showcase next season as part of ReACT: New Plays in Progress public reading series. Dehors is grounded in human truth examining conventional notions of identity and belonging, among characters for whom hybridity is home.

Constance Labb , from France, will be translating into French Julia Lederer's play, With Love and a Major Organ (Les battements du papier). In English, the piece has been staged in Los Angeles, Alaska, Chicago, and New York, with an upcoming production in Texas. It's also currently being adapted into a feature film. The translation will be showcased as part of Mise En Capsules, a festival known for discovering new voices in French theatre. The play's power, uniqueness, and charm is expressed through the use of specific and unusual phrasing, speech pattern, and lyrical metaphors, a true challenge for translation.

Translator Maryse Warda will join us to finalize the French translation of Anthony Black's One Discordant Violin. With a sold out world premiere in 2018 in Halifax and a tour in Mumbai, India, the French translation will be presented by 2b Theatre with a reading at L'Ecole du Carrefour in Dartmouth Nova Scotia in September 2019. The story, in part, is about the difficulty of translating music - its effect, its beauty, its technical details - into words. Their aim is to create a performance text tailored to how an anglophone actor who is very fluent in French (Anthony) would speak it, rather than the French of a francophone.

Each year, under the mentorship of award-winning translator Bobby Theodore, playwrights and translators from across Canada and the world immerse themselves in a 10-day translation residency, to translate new and exciting plays that will be produced on stages across the country and internationally.

Since its establishment, over 60 plays have been translated at the Glassco Translation Residency and more than ten languages have been spoken. The plays have been performed across the globe with translations bringing plays to a wider and more diverse audience. Plays developed at Tadoussac have included work from Michel Tremblay, Michel Marc Bouchard, Albert Camus, Marie Clements, Hannah Moscovitch and Carole Fr chette among others.

The residency was established in 1998, when the renown Canadian theatre director, producer, translator and Tarragon Theatre founder, Bill Glassco opened the doors of his family home in Tadoussac. Masterfully led and molded by acclaimed Canadian dramaturg and literary translator Linda Gaboriau for over two decades, the residency has become a rooted and unique experience in which the profound exploration of ideas embedded within a play can be unearthed in translation.

 

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