Oh, happy day.
The Playwright's Laboratory (TPL) is presenting a script-in-hand reading of my translation of the Momoko Takeda play, Love—No Filter, at a pop-up festival at the Arcola Theatre in London in May.
Situations like these can serve as an espresso shot of confidence, helping you recognize that you might be doing something right.
I'm honoured, grateful, excited, and blessed that Katherine and the team at TPL handpicked the play for their inaugural festival. Translation can be a lonely pursuit sometimes, often leaving you with a nagging sense of anxiety that your work might not be connecting with its intended audience. Situations like these can serve as an espresso shot of confidence, helping you recognize that you might be doing something right.
Love—No Filter (original title, Ibishinai Ai) was such a creative journey for me, involving a crash course in the lesser-known Hata dialect, flights down to Kochi City to see a performance of the as-yet recorded play, and hours holed up in hotel rooms and various Starbucks' to meet the deadline. And while I had an inkling that this play would resonate due to multiple award-winning Momoko's engaging writing and brilliantly singular view of the world, there is always the fear that it could reside quietly in a neatly bound book without getting to see the light of day.
Stage play translation is a nerve-wracking experience. You are tasked with bringing the playwright's often intricate and nuanced messages to garner the same response from an audience unfamiliar with the source language to those fluent in the native tongue. While this is not an exact science, and there is always a certain amount of subjectivity involved, having the play selected for the Arcola festival is a humbling and exciting first-step recognition that my work might have achieved this on some level. Looking forward to what's next :)
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