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Official: OSF to Translate Shakespeare's Plays for Modern Audiences

By: Sep. 29, 2015
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The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced today the launch of a 39-play, three-year commissioning project, Play on! 36 playwrights translate Shakespeare. Supported by a generous grant from the Hitz Foundation and inspired by long-time OSF patron Dave Hitz's passion for Shakespeare, the project is led by Lue Morgan Douthit, OSF's director of literary development and dramaturgy. Read what BWW's Michael Dale had to say about the project here!

Play on! has engaged many of the nation's leading playwrights, dramaturgs, theater professionals, expert advisors and emerging voices in the field. Among the goals of the project is to increase understanding and connection to Shakespeare's plays, as well as engage and inspire theatergoers, theater professionals, students, teachers and scholars. Play on! also will provide translated texts in contemporary modern English as performable companion pieces for Shakespeare's original texts in the hope they will be published, read and adapted for stage and used as teaching tools.

"We began this project with a 'What if?,' Douthit said. "There are differences between the early modern English of Shakespeare and contemporary English. What if we looked at these plays at the language level through the lens of dramatists? What would we learn about how they work? Would that help us understand them in a different way? 'Translate' is an inadequate word because it implies a word-for-word substitution, which isn't what we're doing. I'm going for something much more subtle. But I like the rigor that 'translate' implies. What excites me the most about this is who will dig into these texts. We have paired 36 playwrights with dramaturgs, and we are asking them to go in and look at what the plays are made of. The writers get the great joy of tagging along with the world's best poetic dramatist. It will be the geekiest exercise ever."

The project has commissioned a playwright and dramaturg for each of the 39 plays attributed to Shakespeare (including Two Noble Kinsman and Edward III). By commissioning diverse playwrights (more than 50 percent women and more than 50 percent writers of color), OSF will bring fresh voices and perspectives to the work of translation.

In approaching the task OSF has established two basic rules. First, do no harm. There is language that will not need translating and some that does. Each team is being asked to examine the play line-by-line and translate to contemporary modern English those lines that need translating. There is to be no cutting or editing of scenes and playwrights may not add their personal politics. Second, put the same kind of pressure on the language as Shakespeare put on his. This means the playwright must consider the meter, rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, rhetoric, character action and theme of the original. These translations are not adaptations. Setting, time period and references will remain unchanged.

OSF will continue its commitment to producing all of Shakespeare's plays between 2015 and 2025, and all these productions will use the original texts. One or more of the Play on! translations may be produced at OSF along with the complete original canon. It is the hope and expectation that a production will inspire audience members to return to Shakespeare's original texts, ideally with much greater understanding and enjoyment.

"My interest in the question of how to best create access to these remarkable works is life-long," OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch said. "As a seventh grader, I translated Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into contemporary English for my classmates to better understand it. I am delighted that the Play on! translations will give dramatists a deep personal relationship with Shakespeare's words and that they will give artists and audiences new insights into these extraordinary plays."

"I've been seeing Shakespeare plays since I was a child," Dave Hitz said. "I love reading a play before the show, especially out-loud with friends, in order to understand the performance better. When I learned that foreign translations of Shakespeare are in modern language, I was jealous. I fantasized about seeing Shakespeare performed in contemporary modern English. I'm thrilled that OSF is taking on this project. No translation can replace the original, but it can broaden the audience and provide new understanding even for those of us who love the original language. I hope these translations will attract a new audience to Shakespeare and lead them back to his original words as well."

Each play will have a reading and workshop with a director and actors to provide further insight into the work before the final drafts are submitted. OSF will produce readings and workshops of these translations all over the country. In addition, an annual convening will be held to facilitate dialogue and shared discovery among the writers.

Kennenth Cavandar's translation of Timon of Athens, a pilot for this project, was produced at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2014. At this point in time three translations are scheduled for production: Pericles at Orlando Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen at University of Utah, and The Tempest at Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

A list of the playwrights and dramaturgs is below!

PLAY

PLAYWRIGHT

DRAMATURG

All's Well That Ends Well

Virginia Grise

Ricardo Bracho

Antony and Cleopatra

Christopher Chen

Desdemona Chiang

As You Like It

David Ivers

Lezlie C. Cross

The Comedy of Errors

Christina Anderson

Martine Kei Green-Rogers

Coriolanus

Sean San Jose

Rob Melrose

Cymbeline

Andrea Thome

John Dias

Edward III

Octavio Solis

Kimberly Colburn

Hamlet

Lisa Peterson

Luan Schooler

Henry IV, Part One

Yvette Nolan

Waylon Lenk

Henry IV, Part Two

Luis Alfaro

Tanya Palmer

Henry V

Lloyd Suh

Andrea Hiebler

Henry VI, Parts One, Two, Three

Douglas Langworthy

Mead Hunter

Henry VIII

Allison Moore

Julie Felise Dubiner

Julius Caesar

Shishir Kurup

Nancy Keystone

King John

Brighde Mullins

Katie Peterson

King Lear

Marcus Gardley

Nakissa Etemad

Love's Labor's Lost

Josh Wilder

Jeanie O'Hare

Macbeth

Migdalia Cruz

Ishia Bennison

Measure for Measure

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Liz Engelman

The Merchant of Venice

Elise Thoron

Julie Felise Dubiner

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Dipika Guha

Christine Sumption

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Jeff Whitty

Heidi Schreck

Much Ado About Nothing

Ranjit Bolt

Lydia G. Garcia

Othello

Mfoniso Udofia

TBA

Pericles

Ellen McLaughlin

Alan Armstrong

Richard II

Naomi Iizuka

Joy Meads

Richard III

Kwame Kwei-Armah

Gavin Witt

Romeo and Juliet

Hansol Jung

Aaron Malkin

The Taming of the Shrew

Amy Freed

Drew Lichtenberg

The Tempest

Kenneth Cavander

Christian Parker

Timon of Athens

Kenneth Cavander

Lue Morgan Douthit

Titus Andronicus

Taylor Mac

Jocelyn Clarke

Troilus and Cressida

Lillian Groag

James Magruder

Twelfth Night

Alison Carey

Lezlie Cross

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Amelia Roper

Kate McConnell

Two Noble Kinsmen

Tim Slover

Martine Kei Green-Rogers

The Winter's Tale

Tracy Young

Ben Pryor

If you'd like to follow this project, connect with Play On! via Facebook and Twitter (@PlayOnOSF).

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935 and winner of a 1983 Tony Award for outstanding achievement in regional theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival presents an eight-month season of 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals, and new works. The Festival also draws attendance of more than 400,000 to almost 800 performances every year and employs approximately 575 theatre professionals. In 2008, OSF launched American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, a 10-year cycle of commissioning new plays that has already resulted in several OSF commissions finding success nationwide.



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