Performing International Plays

Performing International Plays (PIP) is a provider of school workshops, teacher CPD and an incredible website full of learning resources on contemporary international plays. Leading the pioneering initiative is project director Dr Margherita Laera and workshops education lead (and co-artistic director of independent theatre company Foreign Affairs) Trine Garrett.

The initiative started with Margherita's research work at the University of Kent: ‘For me as a researcher it has always been a really important question: why are there so few translations on British stages?’ Margherita told me: ‘I'm still interested in this question and I decided in order to intervene into the space that is almost a hostile environment for theatre in translation: I wanted to start with education’.

Although Margherita works in higher education, she decided it would be great to work with schools and teachers ‘to create an interest and share my passion for international theatre, harnessing the power and opportunities in using international theatre in translation’ as a means to foster intercultural understanding and connections – a core aim of PIP.

As a starting point, in order to realise these ambitions and objectives, Margherita and her team developed the website, the teaching and learning resources, and then an in-person element was added.

‘The website alone wasn't going to do the activism for us,’ reflects Margherita, which is where Trine, and Foreign Affairs’ co-artistic director Camila França come into the picture. Each knew of the other, and that their aims and ethoses were aligned: ‘We were sort of working parallel, so to speak, with a similar agenda but from the practice point of view of a licensed theatre company based in Hackney, producing and championing plays in translation for over a decade,’ Trine outlined. ‘We hadn't yet fully reached out to schools and engaged with younger people directly, so it made a lot of sense to do this together.’

PIP's website is a joy to engage with; it includes a selection of twenty-one plays from six continents written in sixteen languages by authors from diverse backgrounds, published in English translation, each of which can be easily incorporated into curricular and enrichment activities throughout schools and colleges.

In deciding on the plays to include, Margherita explains: ‘We wanted to be representative somehow of the diversity there is in the world of international playwriting’. And so Margherita and her reading team set about reading ‘everything there was, which back in 2019 wasn't actually that much, because a lot less had been translated and published’.

There was a set of criteria that helped in the choosing of the plays to be showcased by PIP's website: ‘We wanted as many languages as possible, but of course we also wanted excellent plays that were tackling important issues and were age appropriate’ Margherita explains. PIP also decided they wanted to make sure they used plays that had already been published and professionally staged. This decision came about during the development of the website and resources, in conjunction with feedback from teachers.

Although the plays don't yet feature on exam specifications as set texts (this is a hope for the future), if a student/teacher wanted to, they could engage with the website's texts and use them in performance work for visiting examiners, for example, because the plays fulfil the exam board criteria. ‘We wanted to cast the net as wide as possible and tick all the boxes,’ said Margherita, so that, whether the website and plays are being explored through drama, modern foreign languages, personal development curriculum, drama exams, or extra-curricular, they would be useful and applicable.

The final selection has one key text from each continent, which has the most extensive accompanying resources, including video of staged extracts by professional performers. Then there are four more additional plays for each continent, with accompanying resources for use in classrooms or in realising the work in performance. Once again, PIP used the teachers on its board to advise them of what would be needed, or most useful, going well beyond what is usually to be found for international plays. ‘When an international playscript is translated,’ explained Margherita, ‘often that's all there is; there isn't perhaps all the other apparatus needed for teaching, so we decided we would do all the hard work for the teachers.’

The plan is to expand the catalogue, but PIP's success has, ironically, made this more difficult, as Margherita explained: ‘Funders want to fund something that is new; they don't want to fund projects that already exist.’ The search is, nevertheless, on and plans are afoot to expand and, in the future, feature plays that haven't yet been published and are from new and emerging artists – something that Foreign Affairs have championed in their work too.

PIP's student workshop aspect develops young people's international cultural capital through hands-on devising, scene studies and collaborative translation for the stage. PIP doesn't have ‘a finished product that we just parachute into the school,’ explained Margherita. ‘What we want is to respond to what a teacher asks for and collaborate, responding to the school's and students’ needs, the context of the school, and what they're interested in,’ meaning that it's always a conversation with the teachers and the students.

Sometimes, for example, a school might favour a particular play because they want something written originally in a specific language; PIP meets those needs by developing and delivering workshops on that particular play from their catalogue, offering resources the teacher can work with and then enhance afterwards using the website. Trine added: ‘The most fruitful experiences have been where the workshops have not just been one-offs, but running over a period of time with several visits.’

Whatever the specific format chosen, as testimonies on the website show, all the workshops are enriching and powerful, thanks to the facilitators’ cultural connections with the texts they're leading. ‘I think it's wonderful when students engage with these culturally diverse plays and themes, discovering different international theatre practices through the facilitators and through the plays, and where they originate from within different theatre contexts,’ Trine commented. Theatre in translation has the power to communicate global stories from distant parts of the world that matter to young people here and now.

To find out more about collaborating with PIP, or inviting them into your school or setting, visit performinginternationalplays.com