CCF11 – Whose Play Is It? Translating and Performing Chinese Drama for the Global Stage
Speaker:
Dr Yangyang LONG 龙杨杨, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Dr Yangyang LONG is Assistant Professor in Translation and Interpreting. She was awarded PhD by Queen’s University Belfast in 2019. Her works have been published on journals such as The Translator, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents and Coup De Théâtre. She is currently working with Routledge on a monograph entitled “The Works of Lin Yutang: Translation and Recognition”, which will be published with the series “Routledge Studies in Chinese Translation”.
Outline:
Who owns a translated foreign-language play? The translator? The author? The playwright? The director? The dramaturg? The actors/actresses? The audiences? The critics? The theatre company? The (mass) media? What makes a Chinese play – in this case a classic of its national literature – worth translating and performing in a new environment, that is, the here and now of the 21st-century English-speaking world? This talk aims to explore the translation and performance of 2017 “Snow in Midsummer” (窦娥冤, The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth by Guan Hanqing), a new stage production by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its “Chinese Classics Translation Project” (2013-2023).