Multilingual Dramaturgies

“A brilliant book on the practices and politics of making multilingual theatre in a in a European continent in flux where language is anything but stable.”

— Professor Maria Delgado, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
“Profoundly impactful for our understanding of dramaturgy, translation, collaboration.”
—Professor Patrick Lonergan, University of Galway

 Multilingual Dramaturgies provides a study of dramaturgical practices in contemporary multilingual theatre in Europe. Featuring interviews with international theatremakers, the book gives an insight to 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. By bringing 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 European context. Multilingual Dramaturgies sheds light on an exciting theatre practice, argues for its central role in European future, and highlights potential directions for its further development.

 Kasia Lech is a scholar, actor, storyteller, dramaturg, puppeteer, and Associate Professor in Global Performance History at the University of Amsterdam. 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. She is an Executive Director at TheTheatreTimes.com, a global theatre portal which seeks to decolonize theatre criticism. She co-convenes the Translation Adaptation Dramaturgy working group at the International Federation for Theatre Research.