Editor’s Note
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…
The Evicted Soul
Photo by João Cladas By Andréa Bassitt Translated from Portuguese by Elton Uliana Introductory Note The Evicted Soul (Alma Despejada) begins with a fairly simple premise: a seventy-year-old woman has died, but she has not yet left her house. As movers prepare to empty the rooms where she lived her entire life, Teresa lingers between…
Traffic Jam
By Alina Nelega Translated from Romanian by Jozefina Komporaly Hotbed Festival Cambridge (UK), 19-21 July 2024 Alina Nelega’s Traffic Jam (În trafic) received the UNITER Award for Best Drama in 2013, and the author herself directed the text with the Romanian company of the Târgu Mureș National Theatre in 2014. The play consists of the…
Knight Errant
By Florent Carton Dancourt Translated from French by James Magruder Over the course of my life, I have made tens of dollars by translating stage comedies, mostly French, all but one in the public domain. Two of them, Marivaux’s Le Triomphe de l’amour (1732) and Lesage’s Turcaret (1709)were, when I translated them for my Yale…
Review of The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Uruguayan Plays
The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Uruguayan Plays, ed. Sophie Stevens and William Gregory. Trans. Stephen Brown, William Gregory, Catherine Boyle, Rachel Toogood, Kate Eaton, and Sophie Stevens. Methuen Drama Play Collections, London: Methuen Drama, 2025. Reviewed by Sarah M. Misemer, Texas A&M University This latest translation project by Sophie Stevens and William Gregory features…
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