Latin America: The Poor Relative in US Drama Schools

When, as an adjunct, I taught courses in Latin American plays in the 1990s at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Yale's School of Drama, I was the first person in the field to be hired. Courses on Latin American plays in theatre departments were (and still are) not common. The NYU job materialized because the head of the undergraduate theatre program was a former director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), where I had consulted on TCG's Translation Project in the mid-1980s. The invitation from Yale was generated out of a written note from the drama students to the dean demanding that courses on Asian, African, and Latin American theatre be included in the Drama School's curriculum.

The course I taught at Yale was particularly interesting for me, because it was part of the dramaturgy program. Students were learning how to analyze a play for structural and dramatic value. At the end of the course, they were able to apply their knowledge of dramaturgy and their theatrical imaginations by preparing a dramaturg's notebook for a play they had selected from those taught in the course. To do that, they researched the play and its characters, the time period in which it was written, relating it to the sociopolitical climate of the country, and they drew up ideas for sets, lighting, and costumes. I would have liked to have taken it one step further and staged one or more of the plays with the students functioning as dramaturgs and/or directors.

Now, to study Latin American plays at Yale, drama students have typically been sent to the Latin American studies program, thus limiting access only to those who speak Spanish. And though teaching plays in their original language has the advantage of not running the risk of being misinterpreted through translation, they are often taught by professors with little working knowledge of theatre.

Drama schools/departments tend to exclude courses in Latin American theatre for a variety of reasons. One, Latin America plays are not considered priority material in the realm of world theatre; two, there are few theatre professors whose expertise includes Latin America; three, those qualified to teach Latin American plays as theatre may not have a broad enough background to teach other courses within the department, so that hiring them could strain departmental budgets; and four, there is a shortage of English translations available, and a dearth of good ones.

I found it difficult to locate workable English translations for the courses. Colleagues who teach Latin American plays as theatre, of whom there are but a handful, complain to me about similar difficulties as they put together syllabi. They often find themselves in the position of having to translate the plays, as I did when I began to produce Latin American plays in New York and teach courses in Latin American theatre. (Another problem is the limited availability of visuals—production photos, videotapes, film—of Latin American productions that can enhance the courses.)

Most world plays are translated or adapted into English by playwrights. Latin American plays, primarily because there is less interest among our professional theatre community in that area of the world, tend to be translated by nontheatre people, usually academics or literary translators, which can result in literal or literary translations that do not play well on the stage.

Because a person not trained in theatre has more difficulty visualizing a script onstage, the translation tends to be overwritten, too spelled out, too clear. Being unfamiliar with the process of putting a script "on its feet," going from the written page to the stage, the translator has a tendency to fill in the gaps by adding words or phrases ostensibly to clarify or smooth out the dialogue. It's an easy trap to fall into, because above all you want to communicate. But by doing that, in a sense the translator takes on the roles of director, dramaturg, and actor, as well as playwright, forgetting that there will be others interpreting the script for the stage. A good playwright does not spell things out...