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In this volume, Kathleen Jeffs draws on first-hand experience of the Royal Shakespeare Company's rehearsal room for the 2004-05 Spanish Golden Age season to put forth a collaborative model for translating, rehearsing, and performing Spanish Golden Age drama. Building on the RSC season, the volume offers methodologies for translation and communication that can feed the creative processes of actors and directors, while maintaining an ethos of fidelity with regards to
the original texts. It argues that collaboration between academics and theatre practitioners was instrumental in the success of the season and that the work carried out has repercussions for critical debate of Comedia.
The volume posits a model for future productions of the Comedia in English, one that recognizes the need for the languages of the scholar and the theatre artist to be made mutually intelligible by the use of collaborative strategies, mediated by a consultant or dramaturg proficient in both tongues. This model applies more generally to theatrical collaborations involving a translator, writer and director, and will be useful for translation and performance processes in any
language.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Pre-Rehearsal Questions of Performance Tradition and Play-Selection
- 2: Rehearsal and Translation: Collaboration Strategies
- 3: Polymetric Verse on Stage in Translation
- 4: (Un)Familiar Faces, Places and Conflicts: Characterization in the Comedia
- 5: Metatheatrical Staging
- 6: The Impact of the RSC's Spanish Golden Age Season
- Appendix A: Stages of Translation: Diana's Letter
- Appendix B: Stages of Translation: Teodoro's Letter
- Appendix C: Verse Charts
- Appendix D: Mayors, Aldermen and Scribes in Cervantes (by Jack Sage)
- Appendix E: Line Attribution in El perro del hortelano
About the author
Kathleen Jeffs is Associate Professor at Gonzaga University. Previously, she served as Post-Doctoral Research Assistant on the AHRC-funded project Out of the Wings (www.outofthewings.org) for which she was based at the University of Oxford. The aim of the project is to create a virtual environment geared for theatre practitioners and educators to spark new performances of Spanish drama in English translation. Dr Jeffs's doctoral research took place within the context of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Spanish Golden Age Season in 2004-05, for which she served as rehearsal dramaturg. Prior to her move to Gonzaga, she lectured on Golden Age drama at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and taught an undergraduate drama course at the University of Sussex.
Summary
In this volume, Kathleen Jeffs draws on first-hand experience of the Royal Shakespeare Company's rehearsal room for the 2004-05 Spanish Golden Age season to put forth a collaborative model for translating, rehearsing, and performing Spanish Golden Age drama. Building on the RSC season, the volume offers methodologies for translation and communication that can feed the creative processes of actors and directors, while maintaining an ethos of fidelity with regards to the original texts. It argues that collaboration between academics and theatre practitioners was instrumental in the success of the season and that the work carried out has repercussions for critical debate of Comedia.
The volume posits a model for future productions of the Comedia in English, one that recognizes the need for the languages of the scholar and the theatre artist to be made mutually intelligible by the use of collaborative strategies, mediated by a consultant or dramaturg proficient in both tongues. This model applies more generally to theatrical collaborations involving a translator, writer and director, and will be useful for translation and performance processes in any language.
Additional text
Staging the Spanish Golden Age serves as a detailed, critical record of an important translation event for the English-speaking stage and as an insightful provocation for future theatrical-translational collaborations.
Report
This well-written and thorough monograph is highly recommended for scholars and theater practitioners alike. Jeffs's notes on the translation process are appropriate for translators considering the comedia, and her writingstyle is approachable for students at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Christopher C. Oechler, Bulletin of the Comediantes
