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

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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