Multilingual Dramaturgies Towards New European Theatre

Multilingual Dramaturgies provides a study of dramaturgical practices in contemporary multilingual theatre in Europe. Featuring interviews with international theatremakers, the book gives an insight into diverse approaches towards multilingual theatre and its dramaturgy that reflect cultural, political, and economic landscapes of contemporary Europe, its inhabitants, and its theatres. First-hand accounts are contextualized to reveal a complex set of negotiations involved in the creative and political tasks of staging multilingualism and engaging the audience, as well as in practical issues like funding and developing working models. Using interviews with practitioners from a diverse range of theatrical backgrounds and career levels, and with various models of financial support, Multilingual Dramaturgies also offers an insight into different attitudes towards multilingualism in European theatres. The book illuminates not only the potential for multilingual dramaturgies, but also the practical and creative difficulties involved in making them. By bringing the voices of artists together and providing a critical commentary, the book reveals multilingual dramaturgies as webbed practices of differences that also offer new ways of understanding and performing identity in a European context. Multilingual Dramaturgies sheds light on an exciting theatre practice, argues for its central role in Europe and highlights potential directions for its further development.

Chapter1. Multilingual Dramaturgies: Theories, Politics, and European landscape.- Part I: Questions Of Language.- Chapter 2. The Failures of Multilingual Dramaturgies: The blind poet by Needcompany.- Chapter 3. Multisensory, Multilingual Dramaturgy as a Tool for Social Change: Nie Mów Nikomu (Don’t Tell Anyone) by Scena Robocza.-Chapter 4. Dramaturgy of Incomprehensibility and Encounter in Odin Teatret’s The Tree.- Part II: Multilingual Adaptations.- Chapter 5. Multilingual Histories of Europe: Sir David Pountney on The Passenger and Memories of Auschwitz.- Chapter 6. Multilingualism as Mask and Virus: The Dialogue with Tradition in the Theatre of Radoslaw Rychci.- Chapter 7. Actors as Creators of Multilingual Dramaturgies: Teatro Inverso and Their Transnational Adaptations.- Part III: Local And Trans-Local Tales Of Cities And Their Communities.- Chapter 8. Dramaturging the Multilingual Community: Dramaturg Nina Thunnissen on the Work of Frisian Tryater.- Chapter 9. Multilingualismand Dramaturgy of History and Democracy: the Lithuanian National Theatre’s Žalia pievele.- Chapter 10. Local and Global Politics in Malmö’s Teater Foratt and Teater JaLaDa.- Part IV:Webbed Dramaturgies.- Chapter 11. Towards Porous Europe: Multilingual Dramaturgies in Rimini Protokoll’s 100% City.- Chapter 12. Towards Aesthetics of Transatlantic Theatre: Multilingualism in SignDance Collective International’s production of Carthage/Cartagena by Caridad Svich.-Chapter 13. Making Europe: How Anne Bérélowitch’s Directorial and Training Practices Open Spaces for New Multilingual Dramaturgies.- Chapter 14. Towards New European Theatre.

Kasia Lech is a scholar, actor, storyteller, dramaturg, puppeteer, and Associate Professor in Global Performance History at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her research and creative practice explore theatre through practice-based and traditional scholarship and primarily focus on theatre in relation to multilingualism, verse, translation, migration, dramaturgy, and cross-cultural encounters. Kasia is the author of Dramaturgy of Form: Performing Verse in Contemporary Theatre (2021). She performed internationally and co-founded Polish Theatre Ireland, a multilingual theatre company based in Dublin. Kasia is an Executive Director at TheTheatreTimes.com, a global theatre portal which seeks to decolonize theatre criticism. She also co-convenes the Translation Adaptation Dramaturgy working group at the International Federation for Theatre Research.