Editor’s Note 5.3
We begin this issue with Daniel Smith and Valentina Denzel’s adaptation and translation of the eighteenth century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi’s The Serpent Lady.
The Serpent Lady
By Carlo Gozzi
Translated by Daniel Smith and Valentina Denzel
The Serpent Lady tells the story of Cherestani, the Fairy Queen, and her mortal husband Farruscad. They must overcome numerous magical obstacles in order to be together.
iPlay
By Bernhard Studlar
Translated by Henning Bochert
One hundred ‘apps’ (like the numbers in Greenaway’s film) throughout the play lead from nowhere to nowhere (but not to anyone being drowned), there are no characters doing anything, and no meaning coagulates around any plot. Even the narrator disappears, and all that remains – as the playwright points out in his preface – is text.
Quijóteres: The Ingenious Puppet Don Quijote de la Mancha
Written, translated and adapted by Jason Yancey
In true Cervantine fashion of overlapping and blurred frames, this warning to maintain a safe distance from the theatre appears to have spilled off the page and into real life.
Policy
By Antonio Muñoz de Mesa
Translated by Phyllis Zatlin
Can we go over the policy?
Editor’s Note 5.2
This issue of The Mercurian is bookended by theatrical translations from two languages and two countries we have not published before: Che Xiao’s translation of Villain in a Turbulent Time from China, and Roger Allen’s translation of Soiree for the Fifth of July from Syria.
Review: New Plays from Spain. Edited by Frank Hentschker
Reviewed by Iride Lamartina-Lens
New Plays from Spain: Eight Works by Seven Playwrights is a living testament to the continuing powerful and influential legacy of today’s theater in Spain.
Soiree for the Fifth of June
By Sa`dallāh Wannūs
Translated by Roger Allen
Theater in this case not only offers a telling commentary on the events of the recent past, but also comes disarmingly close to the actual situation in the public domains of much of the Arabic-speaking world, that very space that in 2014 is being contested in many of its regions following the events of the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011.
Talc: A Powder Room Drama
By Abel González Melo
Translated by Yael Prizant
There’s no talc, but there’s chalk.
Empty Bottles
By Oscar Sanz Cabrera
Translated by Matthew Ward
The play is translated into what I would call a ‘rough and tough’ London English, which I felt was the closest equivalent to the colourful language and ribald humour of the Barcelona residents that make up the cast of Oscar’s characters.
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