Event

Translating the Future: “Translating Plays and Playing With Translation” featuring Aya Ogawa and Jeremy Tiang

Tue, Jun 16, 2020

1:30 PM–2:30 PM

Livestream via HowlRound; Register for link below

Watch the video recording of this conversation here:

Join us for Week 6 of Translating the Future as we continue our series of conversations between renowned translators with “Translating Plays and Playing With Translation,” featuring Aya Ogawa and Jeremy Tiang in conversation.

Aya Ogawa and Jeremy Tiang will discuss translation as part of a playwriting practice, how they use language and translation in their own multilingual work, and how each aspect informs and affects the others in the writing, performance, and directing of their plays.

Click here to register for this event and for the link to the livestream. Free and open to the public, the livestream will start at Tue, June 16th, at 1:30 PM (EDT).

The conversations will be hosted by Esther Allen & Allison Markin Powell. *Viewers can submit questions during the livestreaming at [email protected].

Speaker Bios:

Aya Ogawa is a Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator whose work reflects an international viewpoint and utilizes the stage as a space for exploring cultural identity, displacement and other facets of the immigrant experience. Cumulatively, all aspects of her artistic practice synthesize her work as an artistic and cultural ambassador, building bridges across cultures to create meaningful exchange amongst artists, theaters and audiences both in the U.S. and in Asia.

She has written and directed many plays including A Girl of 16, oph3lia (HERE) and Ludic Proxy (The Play Company). Most recently she wrote, directed and performed in The Nosebleed at the Incoming! Series at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. As a director she most recently directed Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest for The Bushwick Starr and Ma-Yi Theater Company. She has translated numerous Japanese plays into English including work by Satoko Ichihara, Yudai Kamisato and over a dozen plays by Toshiki Okada; many of these translations have been published and produced in the U.S. and U.K. She is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and recent member of the Devised Theater Working Group at the Public Theater and Artist-in-Residence at BAX. ayaogawa.com

Jeremy Tiang is a translator, playwright and novelist, originally from Singapore and now based in Queens. His bilingual play Salesman之死 would have been performed at Target Margin this April, but has been postponed due to the pandemic. Past plays include A Dream of Red Pavilions (adapted from the novel by Cao Xueqin; Pan Asian Rep) and The Last Days of Limehouse (Yellow Earth, London). Last November, his translations of new plays by Chao Chi-Yun, Lin Meng-Huan, and Liu Chien-Kuo to mark the legalizing of marriage equality in Taiwan were presented at the Segal Center. Other translations include plays by Chen Si’an, Wei Yu-Chia, Zhan Jie and Quah Sy Ren. He has also translated books by Chan Ho-Kei, Yeng Pway Ngon, Zhang Yueran, Li Er, Yan Ge and Jackie Chan, among others. His novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. www.JeremyTiang.com

Translating the Future:

Visit Translating The Future page here for the complete conference Program, video recordings of previous events in this series, as well as archival audio recordings, articles, the original program, and more history from PEN’s 1970 World of Translation conference.

This conference and conversation series is co-sponsored by PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.