@dramatistsguild  @bystephenkaplan

On Saturday, February 20th, New Jersey and NYC Guild members, plus three Regional Representatives from across the country who were in town, gathered at Red Bank’s gorgeous Two River Theater for the first preview of Mexican writer Bárbara Colio’s Ropes in a new English translation by Guild member Maria Alexandria Beech. The performance was bookended by a meet and greet with the artistic staff of Two River and a talkback with Colio and Beech.

Artistic Director John Dias, Associate Artistic Director Stephanie Coen, and Literary Manager Anika Chapin shared the theatre’s mission and how they found Colio’s play. Colio and Beech were connected initially through one of the Lark Theatre’s global exchange initiatives and the piece then found its way to Two River as part of their 2013 Crossing Borders Festival which was initiated “to create opportunities for Latino theater artists and foster a stronger relationship between the theater and Red Bank’s Latino community.” In fact, Ropes offered two performances entirely in Spanish to further target audience members that may not usually attend the theatre, even though it’s in their own backyard.

This example serves as a great reminder for writers to think about not just the current audiences that attend a specific theatre, but perhaps that theatre’s target or potential target audience as well. If you have a play that may speak to a certain community, reach out to theatres that serve or are looking to serve those communities. It shows you’ve done your homework and are not just sharing your work blindly.

The road to production also emphasizes the point that there is not often a single, direct route that our plays take in order to be produced. There are many possible paths and getting involved in festivals and exchanges may often result in another opportunity for our plays to be seen and heard.

A fascinating conversation followed the performance as Colio and Beech shared the unique process that is involved in a translation and the discussion served as a fantastic lesson and food-for-thought for playwrights on both sides of the equation. Not only can translating our plays open up whole new markets for our work, it usually teaches us new things about what we’ve written. Colio commented on rethinking moments of her original play based on discoveries of what the English translation revealed.

It’s important to realize, though, that translators are not simply a human embodiment of “Google Translate,” providing literal line-for-line equivalents in dialogue. Just as actors, directors and designers interpret a playwright’s words and infuse them with their own experiences and understandings of the original material, so, too, do translators act as interpreters in their own right. They are another huge part of the collaborative process that is theatre.

Those of you who have ever developed a new play with actors and have had actors say, “This line doesn’t feel quite right for the character,” or, “I’m having trouble with the flow of these words,” or any number of other variations on the theme, have experienced translations—for isn’t this what all theatre is about? First we translate the experiences from our heads and hearts into words and then rely on others to translate these words into images and sounds and actions that can best communicate to an audience.

So, a huge thank you to Two River for hosting us and to all the members that came out for this engaging and thought-provoking event.

From left: Gabriel Gutiérrez as Prince, the youngest brother; Varín Ayala as Paul, the middle brother; and Luis Moreno as Presley, the oldest brother; photo by T. Charles Erickson

L-R Stephen Kaplan, Bárbara, Maria Alexandria Beech; photo by Mary Jane Walsh

skaplan@dramatistsguild.com