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.
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.
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.
By Antonio Muñoz de Mesa
Translated by Phyllis Zatlin
Can we go over the policy?
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.
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.
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.
By Abel González Melo
Translated by Yael Prizant
There’s no talc, but there’s chalk.
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.
By Emilio Carballido
Translated by Jacqueline E. Bixler
The two of us alone here in the house. Looking at this old photo, counting the dead. Just Grandmother and I. The photo has begun to fade.
The Mercurian 