theatreVOICE

The theatre world is still digesting the news of Harold Pinter’s death on Christmas Eve. A great, great loss. In latestNEWS, you’ll find a clutch of links to news items and obituaries. Best thing to do, though, I think, is to listen to the man himself, recorded at the British Library shortly after the death of […]

An amazing week last week: finally, after months of preparation, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The Urban Scrawl project - a partnership between TheatreVOICE, Theatre 503 and Rose Bruford College - went into major recording mode in Sidcup. Which meant that Gene David Kirk, indefatigable programming director at 503 - and newly […]

Sometimes you finish a translation, feel like opening a celebratory bottle of Buzet and find yourself thrown into a heated discussion concerning the German title with your publisher and the theatre doing the première. To translate certain titles can be a real nuisance, because if there is no immediately convincing equivalent, often the […]

One of the fringe benefits of my job as a translator is to see a play in a number of often completely different productions. After all, the quality of a text is defined by the variety of solutions it makes possible whilst still staying true to it. This was strikingly the case with […]

Usually there are two reasons for avoiding a play in future. Either you have seen it too often already and don’t care about it any longer or you are fortunate enough to have been at a definite production. At some time in my theatregoing life I decided I wasn’t too keen on spending […]

First the good news. I’m just rounding off a quick visit to the Dublin Theatre Festival (you can read the Telegraph round-up here) and I can confirm that the Celtic Tiger, although lying prone on the floor and bleeding profusely, hasn’t quite given up the game yet in the face of the Credit Crunch’s daily […]

The symposium on the work of Howard Barker held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (the RSAMD) in Glasgow on May 24, 2008 (which is now streamed on theatrevoice.com) offers some important insights into Barker’s thoughts about his theatre, its international success and its neglect by the English theatre establishment. It also […]

Ford Madox Ford quite rightly advised that one should not meet one’s life heroes. Luckily for me with Michael Frayn, who is celebrating his 75th birthday today, this wasn’t at all the case. When I was introduced to him whilst working on the German translation of Democracy, he couldn’t be more modest and relaxed. Already […]

Whilst even big names like Tom Stoppard, David Hare or Alan Bennett are only rarely performed over here, Martin Crimp and Simon Stephens earn a big part of their income from German royalties. Stephens in particular gets pushed by the influential monthly magazine „Theater heute“ which prints practically each of his texts and follows this […]

365, the National Theatre of Scotland’s production at the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival, is a highly unusual project. Originating with its director, Vicky Featherstone (artistic director of the NTS), it found playwright David Harrower accepting a commission on a specific subject; the first time he has written an original play in this way.
   The play’s subject matter - young adults […]