Translating Plays and Playing With Translation Featuring Aya Ogawa and Jeremy Tiang
Channel: HowlRound Theatre Commons
Date: 17/06/2020

PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at CUNY Graduate Center, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library presented Translating Plays and Playing With Translation livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 16 June 2020.

Tiang and Ogawa address translation as part of a playwriting practice, and discuss how they use language and translation in their own multilingual work, and how each aspect informs and affects the others in the writing, directing, and performance of their plays.

Aya Ogawa is a Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator whose work reflects an international viewpoint and utilizes the stage as a space for exploring cultural identity, displacement and other facets of the immigrant experience. Cumulatively, all aspects of her artistic practice synthesize her work as an artistic and cultural ambassador, building bridges across cultures to create meaningful exchange amongst artists, theaters and audiences both in the U.S. and in Asia.
She has written and directed many plays including A Girl of 16, oph3lia (HERE) and Ludic Proxy (The Play Company). Most recently she wrote, directed and performed in The Nosebleed at the Incoming! Series at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. As a director she most recently directed Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest for The Bushwick Starr and Ma-Yi Theater Company. She has translated numerous Japanese plays into English including work by Satoko Ichihara, Yudai Kamisato and over a dozen plays by Toshiki Okada; many of these translations have been published and produced in the U.S. and U.K. She is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and recent member of the Devised Theater Working Group at the Public Theater and Artist-in-Residence at BAX. ayaogawa.com

Jeremy Tiang is a translator, playwright and novelist, originally from Singapore and now based in Queens. His bilingual play Salesman之死 would have been performed at Target Margin this April, but has been postponed due to the pandemic. Past plays include A Dream of Red Pavilions (adapted from the novel by Cao Xueqin; Pan Asian Rep) and The Last Days of Limehouse (Yellow Earth, London). Last November, his translations of new plays by Chao Chi-Yun, Lin Meng-Huan, and Liu Chien-Kuo to mark the legalizing of marriage equality in Taiwan were presented at the Segal Center. Other translations include plays by Chen Si'an, Wei Yu-Chia, Zhan Jie and Quah Sy Ren. He has also translated books by Chan Ho-Kei, Yeng Pway Ngon, Zhang Yueran, Li Er, Yan Ge and Jackie Chan, among others. His novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. www.JeremyTiang.com

About this Conference and Conversation Series

Translating the Future launched with weekly hour-long online conversations with renowned translators throughout the late spring and summer and will culminate in late September with several large-scale programs, including a symposium among Olga Tokarczuk's translators into languages including English, Japanese, Hindi, and more.

The conference, co-sponsored by PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center CUNY, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, commemorates and carries forward PEN's 1970 World of Translation conference, convened by Gregory Rabassa and Robert Payne, and featuring Muriel Rukeyser, Irving Howe, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many others. It billed itself as "the first international literary translation conference in the United States" and had a major impact on US literary culture.

The conversations are hosted by Esther Allen & Allison Markin Powell.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us.

https://howlround.com/happenings/translating-plays-and-playing-translation