Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi

149 Pages·2022·1.431 MB·English

by  Margherita Laera

Playwriting in Europe
This book maps contemporary playwriting and theatre translation
practices and ecologies in the European continent.
Whether you are a scholar researching contemporary drama and
translation, or a theatre practitioner looking for ways to navigate
theatrical conventions in other countries, this book is for you. Through
questionnaires and one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders, Dr Laera
collects qualitative and quantitative data about how each national theatre
culture supports living dramatists, what conventions drive the production
and translation (or lack thereof) of contemporary plays, and what
perceptions are held by gatekeepers, theatre-makers and other cultural
operators about the theatre system in which they work.
Through country-by-country descriptions and analyses; interviews
with playwrights, translators, directors and gatekeepers; a list of key facts
and best practices; and a rigorous assessment of its methodologies, this
volume is indispensable for those interested in contemporary European
theatre practice.
Margherita Laera is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the
University of Kent, co-Director of the European Theatre Research
Network and Arts Lead for Kent’s Migration and Movement Signature
Research Theme. She is an Executive Committee Member for the
European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance and a
Trustee of Actors’ Touring Company. Margherita is the author of Theatre
& Translation (2019) and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other
Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (2013), and editor of Theatre
and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat (2014). She also works as a theatre
translator from and into Italian and English.
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies
and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside
topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-
garde, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established
subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.
Martin Crimp’s Power Plays
Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire
Vicky Angelaki
Playwriting in Europe
Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi
Margherita Laera
“Don’t Forget The Pierrots!”
The Complete History of British Pierrot Troupes & Concert Parties
Tony Lidington
The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement
of Theatre and Performance
An Intercultural Perspective
Min Tian
Devised Theatre’s Collaborative Performance
Making Masterpieces from Collective Concepts
Telory D. Arendell
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre – Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS
Playwriting in Europe
Mapping Ecosystems and Practices
with Fabulamundi
Margherita Laera
Disclaimer: The European Commission support for the production
of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the
book’s contents, which reflect the views of the authors only. The
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be
made of the information contained therein.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Margherita Laera
The right of Margherita Laera to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-36750-312-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-36750-313-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-00304-943-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003049432
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
Preface by Claudia Di Giacomo and Roberta Scaglione ix
PART I
At Work with Fabulamundi 1
1 At Work with Fabulamundi 3
1.1 An Archaeology of European Playwriting 3
1.2 Playwriting or Dramaturgy? 6
1.3 The Ethics and Politics of Representation 8
1.4 Fromaggio or Formaggio? Translating l Sorriso
della scimmia by Nalini Vidoolah Mootoosamy 10
1.5 Bibliography 14
PART II
Fabulamundi Workbook 17
2 Fabulamundi Workbook: A Report on Contemporary
Playwriting and Theatre Translation
Practices in Europe 19
2.1 Introduction 19
2.2 Structure and Research Questions 20
2.3 Methodology 22
vi Contents
2.4 Executive Summary 25
2.5 Austria and Germany 31
2.6 Czech Republic 39
2.7 France 45
2.8 Italy 51
2.9 Poland 56
2.10 Romania 61
2.11 Spain 67
2.12 United Kingdom 73
2.13 Conclusion: Best Practices 81
2.14 Bibliography 83
PART III
Conversations 87
3 For a Common Cultural Space: A Conversation with
Lejla Kalamujić and Tanja Šljivar about Playwriting
in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro 89
4 Representing Nordic Playwrights: A Conversation
with Literary Agent Hinriikka Lindqvist about
Playwriting in Finland 97
5 From ‘Fuck Story’ to ‘Whose Story?’:
A Conversation with Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson and
Sigríður Jónsdóttir about Playwriting in Iceland 104
6 Cultivating Diversity Through Policy:
A Conversation with Jenny Mijnhijmer about
Playwriting in the Netherlands 112
7 We Have to Run Faster: A Conversation with Tiago
Rodrigues and Marco Mendonça about Playwriting
in Portugal 120
8 A New Beginning? A Conversation with Mark
Levitas about Playwriting in Turkey 129
Index 136
Tables
2.1 Survey respondents and interviewees by country 23
2.2 Survey respondents by country/gender 24
2.3 Survey respondents by country/ethnicity 24
2.4 Survey respondents by country/(dis)ability 24
2.5 Survey respondents by country/sexual orientation 25
2.6 Responses to survey questions: Do playwrights who
identify as X have equal opportunities in your country? 28
Acknowledgements
Writing this book has been a wonderful adventure. I am indebted to
the generosity of PAV staff and all Fabulamundi partners, in particular
Valentina De Simone and Claudia Di Giacomo, who have supported my
research without hesitation from start to finish.
I am also grateful to those theatre-makers, producers, academics, writ-
ers, critics and translators based all over Europe, who remain anonymous
in this book, and yet have offered their expert views about the playwrit-
ing ecosystems in which they work. It is their expertise that has made this
book possible. I hope readers find it useful.
Preface
The journey of Fabulamundi started many years ago. In 2007, with our
Rome-based production company, PAV, we started to work with con-
temporary playwrights, wondering why some of their texts were staged
and not others, what stories were being told and what weren’t. We began
a collaboration with France, where the new writing scene is buoyant,
but where only some writers succeed in having their plays staged abroad.
We therefore created an exchange programme, called Face à face, to fos-
ter theatrical encounters and translations. In 2012, we launched Fabu-
lamundi Playwriting Europe, a collaboration with partners in eighteen
countries, most of which are investigated in Margherita Larea’s research
published here. We remain interested in asking questions about what
is being staged and how. We want to listen to the writers, collaborate
with them, understand what they need. We want to know what tools
are needed for playwriting to flourish, for it to be valued within the
production process. We also want to remain open to learning from best
practices that we can observe in other countries. This book was born to
share practical knowledge and to generate more questions in order to
understand how much more needs to be done to bring diverse stories
centre stage and make contemporary playwriting a protagonist in Euro-
pean theatre.
A heart-felt thank you to Margherita Laera for her bold and important
research.
Claudia Di Giacomo and Roberta Scaglione