Translations

“I wrote with one eye on the news, and the other on Shakespeare’s winking double speak and sarcastic asides, and the marriage of the two tapped instantly and directly into all of our collective outrage at the hypocrisies and absurdities of today. It’s a sobering reminder that Measure for Measure isn’t a play about outdated…

“Mourning is Macbeth…..This was my visceral way into this world—where everyone fears the women who tell the truth about the future.” Playwright Migdalia Cruz

“I wanted to find my way into the text so I can be in conversation with the story of Love’s Labour’s Lost; maintain the musicality of the play; bring out the romp and sass of being a hormonal teenager within the academy; and solidify Rosaline as a Black character in this world….this is a story…

Playwright Marcus Gardley emphasizes the play’s themes of “generational conversations, the notion of the unhoused, memory loss and guilt for people in power, losing power, and the guilt they had realizing that they weren’t actually great leaders.” In his unveiling of themes and the complexities of the play’s characters, Gardley experienced this project “like an…

“[King John] moves through waves of self-appraisal. He becomes self-aware and conscious. He has been found to be the illegitimate son of Richard the Lionhearted, and is a Plantagenet, therefore he has access to a world of privilege. This knowledge gives him the change to step back and imagine himself in new scenarios, to see…

“[Shishir Kurup’s translation] maintains Shakespeare’s intentions and most of his text, while elegantly and seamlessly weaving in more accessible language. The new translation allows more of Shakespeare’s ideas to come through and open the wonders and blazing relevance of the play to more people—which is what theatre should be.” Nancy Keystone, dramaturg

“[the play is] much closer to the kinds of drama audiences experience regularly on television and streaming services: backroom political dramas of intrigue, back-stabbing, and corruption. King Henry VIII presents a completely transactional world, where nearly everyone is a commodity, and where nearly everyone is performing a version of themselves for each other and for…

Dramaturg Martine Kei Green-Rogers says, “Doug was the most collaborative of writer/dramaturgs.” She comments on the dramaturgy of both Langworthy and Shakespeare, saying that within this translation process, “you uncover Shakespeare’s burgeoning dramaturgy within the Histories: the intermingling of the comedic and historical, the massive amounts of names and how he tries to help his…

Playwright Lloyd Suh, who has worked alongside translators of his own plays, says of the translation process that “the most notable lesson was about how much is left unsaid… The Bishop of Canterbury’s early speeches could just as easily be played for laughs as they could be played with intense sobriety and the high stakes…

Playwright and translator Yvette Nolan reveals the darker sides of the political drama, saying that the translation process revealed the more corrupt aspects of the play, which were “now visible to me, springing up, threatening to choke my heroes, tangle their feet, foreboding a bleach and wretched future. But that is another story.”