The Theatre in Translation network (TinT) is a collective of drama translators and others - directors, dramaturgs, producers, agents - committed to the promotion of plays in translation. We aim to foster the creation, publication, and especially production of drama in translation.
Founded by a group of theatre practitioners working in academia and the professional theatre in the US, TinT is primarily but by no means exclusively focused on the American theatre. We maintain and pursue connections with similar organizations, and theatre artists and communities, internationally. While we focus above all on translation from other languages into English, we wish to support all theatre in translation.
At present, in 2024, TinT operates primarily through Zoom meetings taking place every six weeks or so in which members discuss their own and others’ work in theatre translation. Sometimes we invite guests to join us; sometimes we focus on individuals’ recent experiences and the issues they’ve brought up; sometimes we workshop passages from members’ translations in progress. The Google group through which we coordinate those meetings currently has nearly 50 members; there is also a TinT Facebook group with over 350 members.
This website provides information about activities TinT has initiated and participated in, productions of members' translations, and groups and publications that promote international theatre. TinT is also an organizational member of the New Play Exchange, and we encourage translators to join the NPX and enter information about their work.
TinT was featured in a 2016 article on The Theatre Timeshere
TinT's history
TinT grew out of conversations that began at the Theatrical Translation as Creative Process Conference at the University of North Carolina in 2012 and continued into meetings at the Studio Theatre in DC the following year, and at The Lark in New York in 2014. Following the 2012 gathering, organizer Adam Versényi published an article in HowlRound in which he laid out the idea behind TinT, asking “What would happen if we were to think of new translations of plays, both classical and contemporary, into English the same way that we think of new plays written in English?”
Here's a timeline of the principal events TinT has been involved in since 2014:
- 2014: TinT members Neil Blackadder and Sarah Cameron-Sunde, among others, participate in hotINK at the Lark, a week-long workshop leading to staged readings of translated plays from Austria, France, and Mexico.
- 2015: Several TinT members take part in meetings of The Fence, “an international network for working playwrights and people who make playwriting happen - across Europe and beyond,” at the Lark and the O’Neill, and in Mannheim, Germany.
- 2018: Rebekah Maggor organizes Drama Across Borders, a site-specific conference at Cornell University and The Cherry Artspace in Ithaca, NY.
- The 2018 ALTA conference in Bloomington, IN, highlights drama translation, including the keynote speech by Caridad Svich; several other members of TinT serve on the organizing committee and participate in the conference. A multi-authored article about the conference appeared in The Theatre Times.
- The 2019 ALTA conference in Rochester, NY, features staged readings of excerpts from new translations, a panel on staging plays in translation at colleges and universities, and the first annual Cold Beer, Cold Readings - involving volunteers reading scenes from translated plays in a bar.
- The 2020 virtual ALTA conference features an online reading of the translated play The Crack: Among Wild Animals, by Gracia Morales and Juan Alberto Salvatierra, translated by L. Finch, winner of a contest judged by TinT members and presented in collaboration with Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre of Tucson, AZ.