Volume 6, Issue 4, Fall 2017

For the PDF of the current issue, please see the following link: The Mercurian 6.4 (Fall 2017) All past issues can be found under Index.

Editor’s Note 6.4

Editor’s Note Volume 6, Issue 4 (Fall 2017) Temperatures are dropping here in North Carolina after an unusually warm autumn, signaling the time to publish the Fall 2017 issue of The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review. The issue begins with Peter Wortsman’s translation of German Expressionist Ernst Toller’s Hinkemann. As Wortsman describes in his introduction,…

Hinkemann

By Ernst Toller
Translated by Peter Worstman

There are certain merciless works of dramatic art that dispense with cultural niceties and strike the spectator/reader where it hurts most, leaving you staggering and gasping for air.

Gustav Adolf: Stage Play in Five Acts

By August Strindbert
Translated by Wendy Weckwerth

Nearly one-third of Strindberg’s almost sixty dramas are historical plays, yet they are almost unknown among English-speaking theater scholars and artists, and they’ve rarely been produced outside of Sweden.

The First Stone

Written and translated by Miriam Yahil-Wax

Today, Arab women and their supporters demonstrate, speak, and act. Yet the change within Arab society is still to come. Until it does, the bloody practice continues.

In Review: The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Greek Plays

Reviewed by Maria Mytilinaki Kennedy

The publication of a new collection of contemporary Greek plays in translation is a rare occasion worth celebrating. While ancient Greek plays account for a large number of published and performed translations in English, modern Greek theatre is largely unknown in the English-speaking world. The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Greek Plays constitutes an important step in remedying this gap, as it brings together five plays written by acclaimed Greek playwrights between 1995 and 2016.

In Review: Selected Serbian Plays

Reviewed by Paula Gordon

The compilation is an enjoyable read and a fascinating window into the culture and politics of Serbia over the past 80 years and three systems of rule (kingdom, socialist federal republic, and parliamentary republic). The editors chose socially conscious plays, most of which contain implicit, if not explicit, political commentary.