Application and adjustment with a new audience in mind are at the heart of translational and adaptive activities, but public perception – and even scholarly exploration – often ignores that a text they encounter has been altered or originates elsewhere. The volume will engage with, but will not be limited to, the following questions: How is the cultural capital carried by the source text/source material negotiated in the project of application to specific performance styles, genres and cultural settings? How is a text reshaped and given a new identity in such a process? What do the new hybrid texts – performances, translations, versions – communicate about their respective sources and about the circumstances that called them forth? How is agency and authorship negotiated in these scenarios? What do originality and intertextuality mean in such contexts? How are audiences taken into account, and how do audiences participate in the translation/adaptation process, where applicable? What do we learn about translation, adaptation and tradaptation as concepts referring to processes and products if we look at the perspective of application?

Proposals are welcome on subjects as diverse as performances of classics and contemporaries in prisons, hospitals, museums, other site-specific and community theatre settings; translations and adaptations at universities, schools, in drama groups, for contests or competitions and so on. ‘Hijacking’ texts for political or otherwise ideological purposes as well as genre-switching (tragedy to comedy, parodying texts etc.) and other aesthetic changes (verse to prose etc.), localisations and globalisations are all potentially of interest. 

So far we have contributions in progress on translating a little-known Sanskrit comedy and adapting it for a local community performance, experimenting with a Russian classic in adaptation for a student production, and Monica Ross’s and co-performers’ Acts of Memory as adaptation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words accompanied by a short biographical note to the editor, Márta Minier, by15 January 2014 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the editor.