Abstract/Summary

This article focuses on Martin Crimp’s collaborations with Katie Mitchell in the context of productions of plays that involve a process of translation and whose source language is German. Specifically, the article concentrates on the productions of Pains of Youth by Ferdinand Bruckner at the National Theatre in 2009 and of The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht at the Young Vic in 2007. The article offers a distinction when it comes to the terms adaptation, translation and version, before arguing that even in cases where Crimp has not produced a translation as such, but, rather, a version – as in the examples of these two texts – there is a substantial amount of translation involved. This translation is spatial, cultural, corporeal and indeed verbal, rendering the source text into a product that is responsive to a contemporary audience. Beginning with a consideration of The Jewish Wife, the article then goes on to examine in detail the methods through which Crimp and Mitchell delivered a modern staging of Pains of Youth that was entirely attuned to its modern-day context while remaining sensitive to its original cultural environment.