Welcome to the Spring 2026 issue of The Mercurian!

The issue opens with Elton Uliana’s translation of contemporary Brazilian playwright Andréa Bassit’s one-act The Evicted Soul.  The Evicted Soul is an award-winning solo piece depicting a seventy-year-old woman has died, but still lingers in her house, vacillating between memory and confession as she tells the story of the lives lived in this space.  Uliana’s introduction raises a number of interesting translation issues regarding the nature of spoken Portuguese vs. spoken English, wordplay, humor, and the theatrical translator’s relationship to the actor.

Jessica Rainey’s translation of Spanish playwright Yolanda García Serrano’s Run! follows The Evicted Soul.  Based upon García Serrano’s own childhood the play presents the sibling dynamics of a brother in prison for manslaughter and a sister who is a hard-working music teacher as they deal with their mother’s death and the inheritance of her house.  Rainey’s introduction raises a number of translation issues regarding cultural difference around sport and swearing and the translation choices she made for a British audience.

Next comes Jozefina Komporaly’s translation of Romanian playwright Alina Nelega’s Traffic Jam.  Structurally akin to the film Rashomon, or Brecht’s essay “The Street Scene”, Nelega’s play narrates the events of a traffic jam from the perspectives of six women and a dog.  In the process one woman’s decision to demand a divorce illuminates points of crisis in all the other characters’ lives.

We continue with James Magruder’s translation of the seventeenth century French playwright Floren Carton D’Ancourt’s Knight Errant.  An engaging comedy of manners, D’Ancourt’s corrupt society has many parallels to contemporary societies on both sides of the Atlantic and, as Magruder suggests in his introduction, would easily find a home in television.

The issue concludes with Sarah Misemer’s review of The Methuen Book of Contemporary Uruguayan Plays, ed. Sophie Stevens and William Gregory, with translations by Stephen Brown, William Gregory, Catherine Boyle, Rachel Toogood, Kate Eaton, and Sophie Stevens.

Finally, this is my last issue as Editor of The Mercurian.  Since I founded the journal in 2007 it has been a labor of love for me.  I could not have anticipated how much the journal has grown and the number of wonderful theatrical translators who have shared their work and whom I’ve been privileged to work with over the past nineteen years.  I would also be remiss if didn’t acknowledge the series of graduate students and staff members who have served as my Assistant Editors and Editorial Assistants over the years, most especially my current Assistant Editor Meaghan Coogan, a newly minted doctorate in Romance Studies, without whom no issue would have appeared and whose assistance was so crucial to the success of Theatrical Translation as Creative Process:  A Conference Festival III this past February!  With my retirement from UNC-Chapel and PlayMakers Repertory Company in June this seems the appropriate moment to pass the journal along to someone with new ideas and fresh energy.  I am delighted that Daniel Smith, whose own translations and book reviews have been published in The Mercurian over the years, will be taking the helm with the Fall 2026 issue.  Please welcome him as the new Editor of The Mercurian!

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.

—Adam Versényi