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The Translator as metteur en scène, with Reference to Les Aveugles [The Blind] by Maurice Maeterlinck

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Staging and Performing Translation

Part of the book series: Cultural Criminology ((CUC))

Abstract

This isn’t really a letter to Maurice. It’s part of a letter originally addressed to George Farquhar. And it’s not from me, it’s from Max Stafford-Clark. In Letters to George the director, accustomed to teasing out the uncertainties of new work in the presence of the playwright, finds himself working on a production of Farquhar’s 1706 play The Recruiting Officer, and sets out an epistolary account of his daily process of creating a performance text on the basis of a culturally remote and necessarily incomplete play text.

Dear Maurice. first run-through today. It was good. A good account of the work so far, but not a spectacular breah-through. I think the actors were pleased and encouraged. I felt disappointed — not with them, but with myself. Sometimes, after a raw-through, the director can see the play. […] Today, it was murky and I couldn’t see much.

(Stafford-Clark, 1989, 159)

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© 2011 Carole-Anne Upton

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Upton, CA. (2011). The Translator as metteur en scène, with Reference to Les Aveugles [The Blind] by Maurice Maeterlinck. In: Baines, R., Marinetti, C., Perteghella, M. (eds) Staging and Performing Translation. Cultural Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230294608_3

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