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PROJECTS

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Celebrating Women in Translation Month

August is #WITMonth

We are happy to support Women in Translation month, an initiative created by Meytal Radzinskiin 2014, and is updated by a group of women translators and advocates of women’s work in translation.

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We have made it our own by specifically promoting theatrical texts written and translated by women.

AUGUST 2019

Contact us for any plays translated and written by women so we can promote it in August.

AUGUST 2016

In August 2016, we tweeted a play written and translated by a woman every day for a month. 

These are the 31 translated plays we selected.
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  1. Your Handsome Captain (1987) by Simone Schwarz-Bart (b. Guadeloupe, 1938), translated by Jessica Harris and Catherine Temerson in 1989 (translation commissioned by Ubu Repertory Theater).
     

  2. Matchmaker (2001) by Patricia Suárez (b. Argentina, 1970), translated by Ana Puga in 2011. Play about the 20th century sex trade in Jewish women imported from Eastern European villages to brothels in Buenos Aires. Staged in the Thurber Theatre at The Ohio State University in 2012.
     

  3. Paphnutius by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (c. 935 - c. 1002) – earliest known female playwright in the German lands - translated by Christopher St. John (Christabel Marshall, 1914) for the Pioneer Players. American feminist drama group Guerrilla Girls On Tour started the Hrotsvitha Challenge in 2006 – the group awards an Annual Hrosvitha Award to professional theatre companies that decide "to scrap their plans of producing yet another production of a Greek tragedy and instead produce a play by Hrosvitha, the first female playwright".
     

  4. Hilda by Marie NDiaye (b. France, 1967), translated by Sarah Woods in 2002. A play on modern-day slavery. Ndiaye’s play Papa doit manger  was the second play by a female writer to be taken into the repertoire of the Comédie française.
     

  5. Dancers by Emma Dante (b. Sicily, 1961), Produced by Palindrome Productions at Courtyard Theatre in 2015. Translated by Francesca Spedalieri in 2014 for Wrought Atlas Theatre Ensemble 
     

  6. True Women (1883) by Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler (1849-1892); translated from Swedish by Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey in 1996.
     

  7. Between Pancho Villa and a Naked Woman (1993) by Sabina Berman (b. Mexico, 1955) translated from Spanish by Shelley Tepperman in 1997.
     

  8. Charges (The Supplicants) (2016) – the newest play by 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek (b. Austria, 1946), translated by Gitta Honegger. The play analyses the plight of refugees from ancient times to the present global crisis.
     

  9. Love (A One-Act Play) (1974) by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (b. Moscow 1938) translated by Alma Law. In an interview published in Voices of Russian Literature (1999), a book by Sally Laird, Petrushevskaya said "Russia is a land of women Homers, women who tell their stories orally, just like that, without inventing anything. They're extraordinarily talented storytellers. I'm just a listener among them."
     

  10. Gabriel (1854) by George Sand (France, 1804-1876), translated by Gay Manifold in 1992. A cross-dressing theatre romance by one of the world’s great cross-dressers.
     

  11. Morning and Evening (1993) by Astrid Saalbach (b. Denmark, 1955), translated from Danish by Malene S. Madsen (1996).
     

  12. Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1928) by Marieluise Fleisser (Germany, 1901-1974), translated from German by Patricia B. Edwards (1983). The play exposes prevalent unequal power relationships between men and women.  London premiere at Gate Theatre in 1990.
     

  13. The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs (1977) by Simone Benmussa (Tunisia, 1931- France, 2001), translated from French by Barbara Wright in 1978.  English language premiere in 1978 at London's New End Theatre with Susannah York.
     

  14. Portrait of Dora (1976) by Hélène Cixous (b. Algeria, 1937), translated by Barbara Wright and again in 2009 by Ann Liddle.  A feminist revisioning of Freud’s renowned ‘Dora’ case history. The play was first staged by Simone Benmussa in Paris.
     

  15. Refugees (2010) by Hlín Agnarsdóttir (b. Reykjavik, 1953), translated from Icelandic by Alva Hellerud in 2015. A play where family difficulties, the Icelandic economic crunch and the international refugee crisis merge.
     

  16. Hulda Juurakko (1937) by Hella Wuolijoki (Estonia, 1886- Finland 1954), translated from Finnish by Ritva Poom in 1996.
     

  17. The Trip to Venice by Bjorg Vik (Norway, 1935), translated from Norwegian by Janet Garton in 1992.  It received the Ibsen Prize in 1991.
     

  18. Woman Triumphant (1917) by women rights activist Marie Lenéru (France, 1875-1918), known as France’s Helen Keller – translated by Melanie C. Hawthorne in 1996.
     

  19. It Must Have Been Giovannino by Paola Riccora (Italy, 1884-1976), translated from Italian by Daniela Cavallaro in 2011. Part of a new generation of Italian women playwrights, Riccora contributed to the development of feminist theatre in Italy.
     

  20. Solavaya (2010) by Angels Aymar (b. Catalonia/Spain, 1958), translated from Catalan by Caridad Svich.
     

  21. Jump Out of Skin (2015) by Zuza Ferenczova (b. Slovakia, 1977), translated from Slovakian by Zuza Flaskova. English lanaguage premiere by Company of Angels in London.
     

  22. Gamble (1950) by Muktabai Dixit (b. India, 1901), translated from Marathi by Maya Pandit in 2006.
     

  23. Polyxena & the Little Cook by Alfonsina Storni (Switzerland, 1892-Argentina, 1938), translated from Spanish by Evelina Romano in 2004.  A play that uses experimental language to portray and criticise social and political realities, by one of Latin America’s leading feminist poets and playwrights.
     

  24. Wavering Traces (1911) by Hasegawa Shigure (Japan, 1879-1941), translated from Japanese by Carole Cavanaugh in 1996. Hasegawa  was the only female to be featured in three volumes of the Meiji bungaku zenshū ("Collected works of Meiji literature").
     

  25. Twilight: A Drama in Five Acts (1893) by Elsa Bernstein (Vienna 1866- Hamburg 1949), translated by Susanne Kord in 2003. Bernstein wrote under the male pseudonym of Ernst Rosmer.
     

  26. The Colour of August by Paloma Pedrero (b. Madrid, 1957), translated from Spanish by Phyllis Zatlin.
     

  27. Just for Nothing (1986) by Nathalie Sarraute (Russia 1900 – Paris 1999), translated from French by Kaye Mortley in 1997.
     

  28. You Have Come Back (1988) by Fatima Gallaire (b. Algeria 1944), translated from French by Jill McDougall.
     

  29. Night (L’Homme Gris, 1986) by Marie Laberge (b. Québec 1950), translated from French by Rina Fraticelli.
     

  30. Norma '44’ (1986), by Italian feminist writer Dacia Maraini (b. Italy 1936), translated from Italian by Lucia Re and Monica Streifer in 2013.
     

  31. House of Desires (1683) by Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz (Mexico 1651-1695), translated from Spanish by Catherine Boyle in 2004.  English language premiere by the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Nancy Meckler, as part of the RSC’s Spanish Golden Age Season in 2005.

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