Artscape: In last Saturday's Irish Times, the Galway-based writer and translator, Ann Henning Jocelyn, was mistakenly referred to (by this writer) as having provided the "literal translation" behind Vincent Woods's new version of Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's Winter, an Irish production of which is currently running at the project.
Jocelyn was quickly in touch to point out that her translation from the original Norwegian is, in fact, "highly acclaimed, original, official", and has recently been published by Oberon Books. Point duly taken, and error regretted.
But the claims which Henning Jocelyn goes on to make suggest that misunderstanding and misinterpretation may have dominated the process of bringing this new version to stage. From her perspective, the new version was unauthorised and should never have gone ahead. Henning Jocelyn claims that Fosse's Scandinavian agent, Berit Gullberg, stepped in to prevent Woods "tampering" with her version of the play, and it was "only after threatening to cancel the Dublin production and putting personal pressure on Fosse himself" that Woods and Rachel West, who produced and directed the new version, received "the go-ahead". For their part, Woods and West say that their production has the backing of Fosse, and strongly refute Henning Jocelyn's accusations.
Later in the week, having attended the opening of the play at Project, Henning Jocelyn wrote again to take issue with Woods's version, stating that her translation had hardly been altered.
These are serious accusations, and in interview this week Henning Jocelyn stands by them. "The script I saw performed followed mine to at least 90 per cent," she argues. "Yet it was billed as a version by Vincent Woods. That is unethical."
She and Gullberg, a close friend, believe that Fosse's work is "so sensitive" that to tamper with it is "very dangerous". It was assumed by them, and by Fosse, she claims, that West would work closely with Henning Jocelyn on the new version. But Henning Jocelyn claims not to have heard from West until the arrival of an invitation to the opening night.
Is this true? West says not, and that she e-mailed Henning Jocelyn at the beginning of the process (the mail, dated May 26th, has been seen by The Irish Times) and received no reply. The accusations that Fosse was placed under "personal pressure" with a threat to withdraw the Dublin production, meanwhile, are dismissed out of hand by Woods and West. While postponement due to a number of other factors was a possibility, cancellation was not mooted. In fact, Woods had never spoken to Fosse until last weekend. It was West, a friend of the playwright, who wrote to him after receiving a warning from Gullberg to "resist all temptations to put Winter into a Dublin patois", setting out her reasons for believing that a new version was needed.
Fosse replied, she says, agreeing "absolutely" to the staging. It was, in fact, after this communication, West claims, that Fosse was contacted by Gullberg and Henning Jocelyn, practically "in tears" at the decision to allow the Dublin version to go ahead.
"Ann's is the authorised translation," Gullberg said this week, "and we thought that the theatre should use that. But Jon is a very wide-minded person, and he said, OK, adapt it to Irish circumstances."
So why the problem? Henning Jocelyn insists that each word written by Fosse carries such a value in the overall script that to change it is to change the meaning of the play; but Woods and West insist that changes to the official translation were needed at a number of points in order for the play to work onstage. For instance, Henning Jocelyn's use of "kidding" was, they believed, too American, while for an Irish audience "woman" sounded more natural than "lady".
Woods disputes the claim that only a few alterations were made, saying that "substantial changes took place all through the text", but that with such minimalist language, some overlap between translation and version was inevitable. Both he and West point out that the original Norwegian, as well as a German translation, were referred to during the production process, and that the help of Sarah Cameron Sunde, a Fosse translator recommended by the playwright himself, was availed of.
While Woods and West both pay tribute to the work of Henning Jocelyn, a writer and translator of some 35 years' standing, they say that the decision not to stage her as-yet-unstaged version of Winter was made "for professional reasons".
"Nobody has stolen her version," says Woods, "and it's still there. It can be put on anywhere."
If nothing else, the controversy, which the publicity-shy Fosse will abhor, comes as a reminder of just how delicate a business translation is. Perhaps the biggest irony is that it should attach itself to perhaps the most translated modern playwright in Europe today.
Belinda McKeon
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Meanwhile, "social choreography" is the focus for the Daghdha company in Limerick. It has invited artists in any medium to submit plans for work that "actively engages with existing social choreography or develops alternative structures of human relationships". Funding of up to €7,000 is available for commissions for Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, a symposium exploring new world orders, ecologies and change, at Project in Dublin (May 29th to June 4th), and a thinktank in Limerick. The project was initiated by Daghdha's artistic director, Michael Klien. Submission deadline is February 25th (tel: 061-467813; e-mail: mail@daghdha.ie; website: www.daghdha.ie).
• It seems the Abbey is never out of the news these days. Next Thursday, its future will be debated at NUI Galway's Literary and Debating Society, where Ulick O'Connor, Alan Titley, Christopher Fitz-Simon and Emer O'Kelly share their visions of the National Theatre (8 p.m., Kirwan Theatre, NUI Galway, admission free). The debate follows the launch of Criterion '05, the society's literary magazine, with articles by Colm Tóibín and Mark Patrick Hederman.
• Is leadership missing in the arts in Ireland? The UK-based Clore Leadership Programme, which aims to help develop the knowledge and skills of potential cultural leaders, is offering a a fellowship for Ireland, supported by the Arts Council and the Clore Duffield Foundation. The fellow will receive two intensive residential leadership courses, professional development through mentoring, tuition and group learning, and secondment. Closing date is Friday, February 25th, with the fellow announced in June. Tel: 0044-207-4209430; website: www.cloreleadership.org
• Academic Jens Brockmeier, whose work deals with the philosophy and psychology of language, music and the arts, will attend the RTÉ Living Music Festival next weekend. One of the greatest living composers, Hans Werner Henze, visits Ireland for the first time for the festival - which focuses on his work and the music of Germany since 1945 - and will give a public interview at the Helix with this year's artistic director, Irish composer Kevin O'Connell, next Sunday. Website: www.rte.ie/music
• Irish-Canadian theatrical links continue. Jason Byrne, of Loose Canon Theatre Company, is just back from Toronto, where he directed the Canadian premiere of Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark at Berkeley Street Theatre. The Toronto Star review described his "taut, economical direction" and the "perfect no-frills staging, concentrating on what is truly important: the actors and the script" of a play "with blood pounding through its veins". The Globe and Mail's reviewer commented that "its psychological realism and muscular language could have been written the other day for all we know". The production was "proof that you can't beat a good script, a strong cast and a director who knows what he's doing . . . Jason Byrne's direction is focused and unobtrusive".