This week’s readings feel very close to my own practice as a playwright and translator. I share many of the concerns raised in the lectures and essays, especially around authority, authorship, and the tension between text and performance.
Theater, unlike most other literary arts, is built on ongoing power struggles. Every production is a series of negotiations, sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit, between playwright, translator, director, actors, designers, producers. Even Chekhov had to wrestle with Stanislavski. Everyone involved wants to project their will. Everyone wants to “run the show,” to leave a creative imprint. In that sense, theater is made out of battles after battles. Authority must be asserted, sometimes gently, sometimes strategically disguised as collaboration, simply to keep the work coherent.
As a translator of plays, I’ve translated four English-language plays into Chinese that were later produced in China. I am acutely aware of the vulnerability Jeremy Tiang describes. The translator can easily be sidelined once the rights are secured and the rehearsal process begins. Because of this, I’ve always made sure to take initiative in negotiations and to remain the primary contact with the American playwrights and rights holders. In practical terms, this means the production cannot move forward without me. Many Chinese theaters lack the direct relationships and fluency in the American theater industry that I have; if they were to approach rights holders independently, they would not be perceived as equally trustworthy or engaged. Maintaining that structural position gives me leverage and protects my artistic stake in the project.
Interestingly, I do not sense the same anxiety in China about translated plays that some English-language discussions suggest. Chinese audiences generally welcome Western plays in translation, and many are perfectly comfortable watching performances with subtitles. If a theater in China can produce translated works or host touring Western companies, it is seen as a mark of prestige rather than a threat to local culture. Translation there feels less defensive and more aspirational.
Michael Frayn’s notes fascinated me in a different way, especially the idea that Chekhov incorporated quotations from other texts and plays into his own work. That had never occurred to me. The tradition of reference seems largely diminished in contemporary American theater, even frowned upon. Playwrights today often seem afraid that their plays will “look like plays.” Explicit references or quotations risk exposing theatricality too directly. I find that anxiety ironic and limiting.
Patrice Pavis’s writing on the relationship between text and performance also leaves me with complicated feelings. In the American context, the development process has in some ways stagnated. As a playwright, I benefit from the high value placed on text. But I also feel constrained by it. Many American plays exist in endless cycles of workshops and readings, as if problems can only be solved through further rewriting. Yet some of these “problems” could be resolved in a single day of rehearsal. The reluctance to let performance generate meaning feels limiting.
There is also a suspicion in the U.S. toward playwrights directing their own work. That separation reinforces the hierarchy between text and staging. Personally, I want to learn how to write in the room, to create through rehearsal rather than in isolation. I agree with the idea that writing and staging should merge more fluidly. But that model requires something the American system often lacks: a stable company of artists who can develop a shared language over time and perform the same work repeatedly. Text-based theater, by contrast, allows for temporary ensembles to assemble and disband. It is more portable, but perhaps less communal.
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