Welcome to the Fall 2023 issue of The Mercurian!

We begin the issue with May Farnsworth, Camila García, and Erin Griffis’ collective translation of Argentine playwright Malena Sándor’s 1946 play, Penelope No Longer Knits. As the translators point out in their introduction, Sándor creates a feminist paean to female desire and autonomy at a time when that was far from the lot of Argentine women. The introduction also describes Farnsworth, García, and Griffis’ approach to translation as a feminist practice, perhaps presenting a model for other translators to follow.

After Penelope No Longer Knits comes another translation collaboration, Carolyn Malloy and Georgina Whittingham’s translation of Mexican playwright Hugo Salcedo’s play The Children of La Malinche.  Salcedo’s play is a rapid satirical ride through Mexican history, politics, and culture connecting the present to the past as it portrays the Mexican populace as a whole as the descendants of La Malinche, Hernán Cortés’ translator, concubine, and mother of his child.

The Children of La Malinche is followed by Magda Romanska’s translation of the great Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda’s stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment from 1984.  As Romanska discusses in her introduction to the translation, while Wajda’s stage work was extensive it is little known outside of Poland and we are pleased to publish an example of it here.  Having first read Dostoyevsky’s novel in Polish translation as a teenager in Poland, Romanska also places Wadja’s work in context for us, both in 1984 and 2023, arguing that in both time periods it can be seen as an anti-imperial project against Russian aggression, but in the 1984 context Wadja necessarily had to focus upon the psychological game of cat and mouse between Raskolnikov and Petrovich, the detective investigating his crime of murder.

The issue concludes with two book reviews:  Katherine Nigh’s review of Cristina Perez Díaz’ translation of Peruvian José Watanabe’s Antígona: A Bilingual Edition with Critical Essays, and Brenda Werth’s review of Sophie Stevens’ Uruguayan Theatre in Translation.  Theory and Practice.  Faithful readers of The Mercurian will recall that we have published some of Stevens early work with her essay “Distancing and Proximity in Analysing and Translating Bailando sola cada noche” in Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall 2016), and her translation of Uruguayan playwright Raquel Diana’s play Her Own Eyes in Vol. 8, No. 2 (Fall 2020).

Back issues of The Mercurian can be found at under the “Archives” tab on our website: https://the-mercurian.com/.  As the theatre is nothing without its audience, The Mercurian welcomes your comments, questions, complaints, and critiques. Deadline for submissions for consideration for Volume 10, No. 1 Spring 2024 will be February 15, 2024.

—Adam Versényi