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Yorkshire Playwrights is a group of professional and aspiring professional dramatists, active in all the dramatic mediums, stage, television, radio. The group works to encourage the writing and the performing of new plays in Yorkshire and to develop understanding of the dramatist's craft.

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TEXTS CROSSING BORDERS

This is Hugh Rorrison's private Report to Yorkshire Playwrights

The conference was a follow up to a previous meeting in Antwerp. It was jointly organised by the 'European Cultural Month Ljubljana', and the Theater Instituut Nederland (the Dutch Theatre Instute, Amsterdam) and the Vlaams Theater Instituut (the Flemish Theatre Institute, Brussels). A 'Cultural Month' is what the European Union offers the smaller cities whose chances of being the European City of Culture (like Glasgow, Dublin, Copenhagen) are slim.

Texts Crossing Borders was the subject of the conference, in particular how to enable successful plays in the lesser European languages to penetrate the major language areas (English, German and French in that order). 26 countries - the notable absentee was France - were represented by theatre people from a great variety of backgrounds (writers, directors, professors, editors, actors, publishers, administrators).

1. In advance of the conference a Reader edited by Bob Klinkenberg of the Theater Instituut Nederland was sent to each participant. Correspondents in 23 countries had been invited to submit a profile of play-writing in their country now. They were to address the following points:

  • Who/what are the most important writers/plays. What are their subjects? Is there a trend?
  • What are the chances of a play being performed abroad?
  • Is the public interested in contemporary writers? What proportion of plays performed is contemporary?
  • How many contemporary plays reach other countries? How do these plays attract attention abroad? (Agents, printed texts or personal contacts?)
  • Are there any professional organisations to promote your writers abroad? How do they work?
One conference session was given to editor Bob Klinkenberg to summarise the contributions, but their diversity defeated reductive analysis. It was however agreed that the handbook alone justified the conference. It is a fascinating, informative document.

2. This was preceded by a session with writers Olafur Simarson (Iceland), Goran Stefanovski (Macedonia/Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia) and Judit Herzberg (NL) on the panel. To summarise their reports...

Iceland has a population of 260,000, all of whom go to the theatre. Simarson spoke of a flourishing scene providing a regular income, and occasional exports to Germany.

Stefanovski's theme was 'Donald Duck meets Byzantium.' An authoritarian, Greek Orthodox, hierarchical society with zero tolerance for 'the other', be it women or other races, is exposed to a liberal, multi-cultural, secular US dominated world where family cohesion has broken down. Good tensions for writers but a hard place to live. Young writers are exploring 'the generic essence of Macedonian culture'. It was relatively easy in a small, minor language country for new writers to get plays on.

The Netherlands/Holland is the opposite of Macedonia - anything goes, tolerance is total. Two thirds to a half of the repertory is imported, mostly from Germany, though new British drama is is arousing interest (examples given: Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill).

3. There was a session with publishers, editors and other disseminators which is hard to summarise. For example Malgorzata Semil explained how she selected plays for publication in the Polish magazine Dialogue. Her sources were translators' suggestions plus a second opinion, productions seen, third language translation. She turned to 'Third World' scholars for Asian material..

4. Another session looked at existing schemes to promote the international exchange of dramatic work. The Theater Instituut Nederland had produced a useful list. Two European Union schemes might, ostensibly, promote European drama, Ariane and Kaleidoscope.

It was agreed that neither of these EU initiatives worked. Of 90 Ariane grants so far, only one was for drama. Ariane is due for renewal/replacement. Everybody agreed that the one source to two target language formula was a failure. After discussion it was agreed to make a strong representations to the EU demanding support for translations from any one EU language to any other. The EU Kaleidoscope scheme was not felt to be relevant for getting text across borders.

5. A further session was devoted to the practice of translation. There were elaborate schemes for optimum translations involved bringing together director, translator and an expert advisor from the source country as a production team.

The idea of a 'central bank' of plays was discussed. La Loggia (Florence, Italy) outlined its project. It was clear that any such bank would require huge funding and an institutional home.

Finally the question of a computerised register arose. The Eastern European countries were cagey, not having the hardware, but there were enthusiasts. A European drama Web home page was suggested, to contain data about, say, six new plays from each country per annum. Dragan Klaic (Theater Instituut Nederland) when asked said he hadn't the staff to service such a project. Other delegates, including Yorkshire Playwrights, agreed to explore possibilities. Here again - it was thought - major funding and permanent staff would be necessary.

The benefit to me of this conference was meeting theatre people from far and wide on an easy, informal footing. Many contacts were made.

Hugh Rorrison August 1997