Objetivos

The House of Bernarda Alba and The UN Inspector were both performed at the Royal

National Theatre complex on the South Bank of the Thames in central London. The mission statement of the National, as expressed on its website, places the theatre complex,

geographically and ideologically, at the centre of British theatrical culture16:

The National Theatre is central to the creative life of the country. [...] It aims constantly to re-energise the great traditions of the British stage and to expand the horizons of audiences and artists alike. It aspires to reflect in its repertoire the diversity of the nation's culture. [...] Through an extensive programme [...] it

16

The National uses the word ‘British’, but it is funded by ACE. National Theatres of Scotland and Wales were created in 2006 and 2009 respectively, and there has also been a campaign by the actors’ union, Equity, to create a National Theatre of Northern Ireland. It is not clear, therefore, to which ‘nation’ ‘National’ refers. I discuss issues of London-centricity and funding later in this chapter.

recognises that the theatre doesn’t begin and end with the rise and fall of the curtain. And by touring, the National shares its work with audiences in the UK and abroad. (Royal National Theatre 2009)

In short, the National aspires to live up to its name and provide a holistic theatrical service to the nation, although the degree to which it is successful in its aspiration is a matter of debate17. Its public responsibility is to some extent a pre-requisite of its funding: the financial accounts for the 52 weeks ended 2 April 2006 (during which period The House of

Bernarda Alba was performed) show that 44% of the National’s income came from ACE

grants, compared with 30% from box office receipts and touring income. A quick calculation shows that ACE subsidised each paying member of the audience during this period by £26 per head18. That the National is the recipient of such substantial public funding inevitably provokes debate as to its duties with regard to the public it serves and the official bodies which provide sponsorship. The ambitious tone of its mission statement and the attempt to include a coherent mix of new and classical texts in its repertoire, while addressing issues of diversity and tradition, reveal the conflicting criteria which a commissioning director must try to satisfy. The inclusion of translated plays within these boundaries raises additional questions.

The National’s translation policy, as expressed by Jack Bradley, its Literary Manager from 1994 to 2006, is to commission playwrights to prepare translations using a literal

translation19. This was the procedure for both these translations, with indirect translators whose names would have resonated with the theatre-going public, for differing reasons, as I discuss in Chapter Three, sections 3.2 and 3.3. The inclusion of two canonic plays by Lorca and Gogol in the National repertory is presumably intended to conform to the aims of the mission statement: ‘to re-energise great traditions’ by commissioning new translations, and to ‘expand the horizons’ by approaching works from outside the English language. In both cases, these two plays have previously been extensively translated and performed for

17

Nadine Holdsworth sets out this debate in Theatre and Nation, summarising the ‘primary challenge’ as ‘the question of whether a single theatre, normally in a national capital, can legitimately claim to serve as a theatre of and for the nation as a whole’ (2010: 34).

18

Calculation based on ACE grants of £17,261,000 divided by total paid attendances of 663,000 (Royal National Theatre 2006: 41-42). For comparison purposes, tickets for the David Hare play The Power of Yes on Saturday 12 December 2009 at 7:30 pm were selling for between £10 and £35.

19

My own notes taken from Jack Bradley’s session, ‘Not...Lost in Translation’ at the conference Staging

English-speaking theatre. The key marketing descriptions of these productions are ‘new’ (The House of Bernarda Alba) and ‘freely adapted’ (The UN Inspector), which give an indication of the National’s claim to possession of these productions and explain their inclusion in the season’s programme. The Artistic Director of the National, Nicholas Hytner, in his report for the year ended 2 April 2006, claimed an ‘inherent worth’ for all the work carried out by the National, placing The House of Bernarda Alba within a group which ‘involved the re-investigation of great plays that will always be staged for the universal truths that they embody’ (Royal National Theatre 2006: 5). This gives some indication of what might have been expected in arranging a marriage between a well-known

establishment playwright and an international classic.

If the National sets itself at the heart of British theatre, it is hardly surprising that its translations may reflect that environment. Over-domestication is a criticism frequently levelled at translations aimed at a large audience, and I address instances of this in my detailed discussions of the translations in Chapter Three. However, the National’s influence extends beyond its own boundaries. Many of the theatre practitioners included in this study, and there is at least one for each of the eight plays encompassed, will have been associated with the National in some way during their career. Each translation therefore bears a trace of the National’s power, even if this manifests itself in the adoption of an opposing, or at least differentiated, stance. I discuss these manifestations as the thesis progresses.

A further consideration for translations at the National arises in the physical theatre setting. The theatre building complex comprises three theatres, with a fourth Studio for

developmental projects under one mile away. The translations in this study were staged in the two highest-capacity theatres. The UN Inspector was shown in the largest, the Olivier, a theatre seating ‘well over 1000 people in a semi-circular sweep inspired by ancient Greek amphitheatres’ (Royal National Theatre 2011b). The Lyttleton Theatre’s proscenium arch accommodated The House of Bernarda Alba, with an 890-person capacity. The size and design of stage, be it traditional or open-style, affects the choice of play and translator, but the number of seats is also significant to the translation: unlike West End theatres, the National does not cancel a play if critical reviews are poor and ticket sales suffer, therefore the aim should be to fill seats every night of a pre-assigned time-scale. This, along with the formal setting, may be seen as an incentive to produce a certain type of translation; to make it accessible to a wide audience, to acknowledge the heritage and tradition of a play,

while also re-energising it and making it new. Such decisions forced on the National’s commissioning teams may be evidenced in its own productions, but they can also influence other theatres, as I introduced in section 2.1. I move now to another influential London theatre with a very different approach to translated plays, which serves as a useful comparison.