ABSTRACT

What motivates a Japanese translator and theatre company to translate and perform a play about racial discrimination in the American South? What happens to a 'gay' play when it is staged in a country where the performance of gender is a theatrical tradition? What are the politics of First Nations or Aboriginal theatre in Japanese translation and 'colour blind' casting? Is a Canadian nô drama that tells a story of the Japanese diaspora a performance in cultural appropriation or dramatic innovation?


In looking for answers to these questions, Theatre Translation Theory and Performance in Contemporary Japan extends discussions of theatre translation through a selective investigation of six Western plays, translated and staged in Japan since the 1960s, with marginalized tongues and bodies at their core. The study begins with an examination of James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie, followed by explorations of Michel Marc Bouchard's Les feluettes ou La repetition d'un drame romantique, Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Roger Bennett's Up the Ladder, and Daphne Marlatt's The Gull: The Steveston t Noh Project.


Native Voices, Foreign Bodies locates theatre translation theory and practice in Japan in the post-war Showa and Heisei eras and provokes reconsideration of Western notions about the complex interaction of tongues and bodies in translation and theatre when they travel and are reconstituted under different cultural conditions.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|41 pages

How Do You Say ‘Mister Charlie’ in Japanese?

Black Speech in Japanese Translation and Performance

chapter 2|26 pages

Speaking Lily-White

Michel Marc Bouchard's Les Feluettes as JQ Translation Theatre

chapter 3|22 pages

Is the ‘Rez’ in The Rez Sisters the same ‘Rez’ in Rezubian?

Trickster Translation and First Nations Theatre in Japanese

chapter 4|18 pages

The Limits of Aboriginal Theatre Translation

Roger Bennett's Up the Ladder

chapter 5|28 pages

Translating Nô: Daphne Marlatt's The Gull