Editor’s Note

Volume 9, Issue 2 (Fall 2022) Welcome to the Fall 2022 issue of The Mercurian! The issue opens with John J. Hanlon’s translation of Artur Solomonov’s 2018 play How We Buried Josef Stalin.  As Hanlon points out in his introduction, this funny, satiric piece prefigures many current events such as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, various…

How We Buried Josef Stalin

Photo: Astakhova Aleksandra By Artur Solomonov Translated by John J. Hanlon Volume 9, Issue 2 (Fall 2022) Decades from now, no one will believe that Artur Solomonov wrote this astonishing play in December of 2018. A full year before Russia’s foreign agent law was expanded, requiring all individuals and organizations who receive any amount of…

Little Red Gretel

Photo: Katja Grcić By Katja Grcić  Translated by Andrea Jurjević Volume 9, Issue 2 (Fall 2022) I met Katja Grcić in 2018 during Goranovo Proljeće, an International Poetry Festival in Croatia. A bus-full of poets from Turkey, France, Italy, Israel, Germany, Wales, the United States, Russia, and other countries toured Croatia with poetry readings. We…

The Cold Chain

The Cold Chain By Yaiza Berrocal Guevara Translated by Sian Creely In The Cold Chain we follow the story of Lola, a little girl whose first taste of potato smilies leads her to write love letters to Mr McCain, the faceless man responsible for her delight.   Aided and berated variously by her former militant father…

The Corporation

Photo: Mario Dance Atelier By Flavius Lucăcel Translated by Mihaela Mudure Volume 9, Issue 2 (Fall 2022) The first production of the play The Corporation by Flavius Lucăcel took place on the stage of the National Theater of Cluj-Napoca, in 2019. The performers belonged to the private company “Mario Dance Atelier” and the director was…

The Rooftop

Photo: from original publication of La Azotea By Rafael Guizado Translated by Gigi Guizado Volume 9, Issue 2 (Fall 2022) Translating Rafael Guizado usually presents me with two key challenges, both of which I encountered while translating La Azotea/The Rooftop. The first is acquiring the source text. Sharing a last name and family tree with…

Review of Theatre Translation: Theory and Practice

Massimiiliano Morini. Theatre Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Reviewed by Emma Pauly Massimiliano Morini’s Theatre Translation: Theory and Practice opens with a metaphor borrowed from Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, the story of a civilization subjected, every two thousand years, to a consuming total eclipse that plunges the populace into madness, ruin, and the…