With this issue The Mercurian moves to a new publishing format that we hope will be more pleasurable to the eye as well as provide a platform for greater access to the work of our contributors. I want to extend my gratitude to my Editorial Assistant Sarah Booker for taking on the majority of the…
By Jorgelina Cerritos
Translated by Margaret Stanton and Anna Donko
Cerritos’ concern with the theme of identity, not as an ethnic construct, but rather as an existential angst, is expressed through techniques of the Theatre of the Absurd such as the lonely desk on an isolated beach, Dorotea’s insistence that her lone client gets in line and the obsession with documents as proof of existence, documents that cannot be obtained without, ironically, other documents.
By Críspulo Torres
Translated by John Thomas Howard
For them, for all Colombians who have lived through the conflict, there is no silence whatsoever; there is only the endless report of bullets, the continued sound of explosions going off in the distance, and the sirens and the screams that accompany these things.
By Jessica Lusia
Translated by Manoela Wolff
If you knew that your heart would stop in the next second, to whom would you dedicate its last beat?
By Sophie Louise Stevens
This article focuses on the process of translating Bailando sola cada noche written by Uruguayan dramatist Raquel Diana in 2008.
Reviewed by Alena Aniskieicz
Debates over the past, present, and future of Poland have long played out in the nation’s dramatic writings.
As the summer heat and humidity begins to descend upon North Carolina, welcome to the unavoidably delayed Spring 2016 issue of The Mercurian.
By Arisophanes
Translated by Karen Rosenbecker
First, I bow to the sun, grateful to see his radiance again, then to the famous soil of Pallas Athena and all the land of Cecrops which has received me, a weary wayward wanderer, come back to her own native shore, to the glory that is Greece and the grandeur that is home.
By Alain Foix
Translated by Amelia Parenteau
The Last Scene offers an almost dreamy depiction of violent realities, and a fascinating window into our past, through a lens of French interpretation.
By Racine
Translated by Catherine Esther Styles
Although Racine’s Phèdre is acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of European literature, it is not often performed in English.
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