Retranslating Strindberg: Adaptation, (re)location and site-related performance. (1st May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Connor, Rachel
• Is Part Of: Journal of adaptation in film & performance. Volume 11:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 71
• Page End: 83
• Publication Date: 2018-05-01
• Subjects: Film adaptations -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Motion pictures and literature -- Periodicals; 791.43605
• DOI: 10.1386/jafp.11.1.71_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-6421

Abstract

This article offers a practitioner's perspective on the experience of adapting, devising and co-producing A Dream Play for a northern British audience at an art café during the Manchester Festival Fringe in 2015. It explores how the process of re-versioning A Dream Play provides insights that might be of relevance to the fields of adaptation and translation studies. Starting from the position that translation is 'rewriting' – an 'active form of interpretation whose cultural impact is extensive' – the article argues that the adaptation of August Strindberg's text to a devised, site-related performance amplified that 'cultural impact' through its 'retranslation' to a non-traditional theatre site. In shaping the responses of cast and audience to the physical performance space, the production created a 'poetics of the collective', which permitted a new engagement with Strindberg's canonical text. The piece concludes with some reflections on the constraints of the writer-adaptor in the re-visioning, particularly in an iconic text such as A Dream Play.