Editor’s Note
Welcome to the Fall 2025 issue of The Mercurian! We begin with Henning Bochert’s translation of Özlem Özgül Dündar’s play body without borders. The translation has its genesis in a collaboration between Jospeh Megel, Artistic Director of UNC’s the Process Series, and Bochert that began with Theatrical Translation as Creative Process: A Conference Festival here…
body without borders
Photo by Maximilian Borchardt By Özlem Özgül Dündar Translated from German by Henning Bochert Özlem Özgül Dündar is a German playwright from Solingen, born in 1983. Her play an grenzen, which I translated into English, narrates the continued history of violence against the foreign workers from South European countries who were hired to build Germany’s…
Silent Days, Sleepless Nights
Photo by Andrea Franzetta By Carmen Pellegrinelli Translated from Italian by Carmen Pellegrinelli Introductory Note This text—originally written by me in Italian—was created during a theatre workshop organised by doctors and nurses from the emergency department of Bergamo’s largest hospital, Papa Giovanni XXIII, to process the traumatic memories of confronting the COVID crisis in March…
Review of The Inheritor: A Play
Review of The Inheritor: A Play by Théâtre de l’Aquarium. Translated by Kate Bredeson and Thalia Wolff. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2025. xxxvii + 55 pp. Reviewed by Daniel Smith The Inheritor is an important activist play about education and privilege, presenting a stylized competition between two students attempting to earn admission to a…
Review of The Entremés for Performance: Translations of One-Act Plays from Golden Age Spain
Review of The Entremés for Performance: Translations of One-Act Plays from Golden Age Spain, ed. Kerry K. Wilks and Ian M. Borden. Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Kathleen Jeffs, D.Phil., Gonzaga University To those theatre practitioners, educators, and scholars sifting for gold amid a dizzying array of possibilities…
Review of The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda: Contemporary Francophone Theatre from Burkina Faso
Review of The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda: Contemporary Francophone Theatre from Burkina Faso Edited and Translated by Heather Jeanne Denyer and Anna G.R. Miller, Methuen Drama, 2025 Reviewed by Sophie Siegel-Warren The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda: Contemporary Francophone Theatre from Burkina Faso, edited by Heather Jeanne Denyer and Anna G.R. Miller, presents six plays by…
Review of Contemporary Performance Translation. Challenges and Opportunities for the Global Stage
Review of Contemporary Performance Translation. Challenges and Opportunities for the Global Stage. Jean Graham-Jones, Cambridge University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Catherine Boyle, King’s College London Catherine.boyle@kcl.ac.uk At the very beginning of Contemporary Performance Translation. Challenges and Opportunities for the Global Stage, Jean Graham-Jones’ celebrates translation as a collaborative practice. The book then goes on to…
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