A joint talk with Dr Vicky Angelaki & Dr Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos

Irish-Austrian Exchanges on the Stage: Performing the Archive with Dr. Vicky Angelaki

What does it mean to perform the archive? The lived historiography of theatre captures the embodied experience rather than logging decorporealised data. The archive is performed in two ways: first synchronically, as lived history is created through our staging and spectatorial choices and then diachronically, as we collect the traces of this presence and self-performance. The choices that we make in theatrical ‘adoption’, adaptation, appropriation, consumption and ultimately intercultural exchange stand to reveal as much about our personal and collective self- and nationhood as any given country’s own cultural production. Theatrical production is at its most riveting when the lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ or the prototypical – and problematic – binary of ‘I’ and ‘Other’ become troubled, and blurred.

In this paper I will concentrate on Austro-Irish theatre exchanges, particularly focusing on archives/performance histories of the two capitals, Dublin and Vienna. The paper will ask questions such as: to what extent do the similarities of the two countries (socio-politically; culturally; artistically) broker a fruitful process of exchange? Is this exchange equitable? What do the absences in the archive stand to reveal – equally loudly as the presences – about national performances?

The paper will begin with an overview of key facts and moments in the two countries’ cultural exchanges before concentrating on the seminal contemporary example of Elfriede Jelinek’s (Nobel Prize, 2004) adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (Ernst ist das Leben, 2005) and An Ideal Husband (Der ideale Mann, 2011).

Dr Vicky Angelaki is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Reading, UK. Her latest monograph, Social and Political Theatre in 21st Century Britain: Staging Crisis (Bloomsbury) was published in 2017. Her research specialisms include modern and contemporary British and European theatre, the crossovers between theatre and science, translation, adaptation, spectatorship and citizenship, as well as performance, critical/cultural theories, philosophy and sociology. She has published extensively in these areas, major publications including The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and the special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review titled ‘Dealing with Martin Crimp’ (24.3). She is currently writing Theatre & Environment for Palgrave Macmillan and co-editing The Cambridge Companion to British Playwriting since 1945 (with Prof. Dan Rebellato). Angelaki also co-edits the new series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, launching 2017).

Cia Ludens in Performance: From Memory to Documentary with Dr Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos

Theatrical translation can be regarded as a meeting, and an approximation, of different cultures on stage, and as analytical exercise in learning about oneself, that is to say, the local culture, through the lenses of the other party – the other (foreign) culture. Theatrical translation is, in itself, a work of playwriting, which requires adjustment of the text, and of extra-textual elements in a performance, to local theatrical practices, as well as fine adjustment of rhythms and sounds, in the cross-cultural encounter on stage.

This paper aims to present a capsule description of the work of Cia Ludens, a theatre company based in São Paulo, Brazil, dedicated to the translation and performance of Irish drama and Irish-related material as a way of bridging gaps of space and culture between Ireland and Brazil. The paper focuses on three productions – Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (Dançando em Lúnassa – 2004); Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire (Balangangueri: o lugar onde ninguém mais ri – 2011-12); and Domingos Nunez’s The Two Deaths of Roger Casement (As duas mortes de Roger Casement – 2016) – and evaluates the company’s intercultural or cross-cultural practice, including approaches that have varied from playing with memory, to fusing original texts and recurring to documentary theatrical style.

Dr Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos is a faculty member of the Postgraduate Programme in English at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and producer and dramaturge with Cia Ludens, a theatre company based in São Paulo, dedicated to the production of Irish theatre. She has a PhD in Linguistic and Literary Studies in English from the University of São Paulo and serves as an executive member of IASIL, for which she is also the Chair of the Bibliography Committee. Her publications as co-editor and organizer include: Ilha do Desterro – Contemporary Irish Theatre (Florianópolis: EdUFSC, 2010); Coleção Brian Friel (São Paulo: Hedra, 2013); and The Road to God Knows Where, by Alan Gilsenan (Florianópolis: EdUFSC, 2015), volume 3 of Ireland on Film: Screenplays and Critical Contexts. She is currently working on the organization of a collection of Tom Murphy’s plays translated into Portuguese and on volume 4 of the Ireland on Film series – Maeve, by Pat Murphy.