It is a daunting task to account in one short article for the entire corpus of playwriting not in the English language. But in an Anglophone theatre culture that remains stubbornly Anglocentric and focused on the Global North, it is also a welcome challenge. Thanks to the growing catalogue of plays in translation published in recent years by Methuen Drama, English-speaking readers have access like never before to the riches of playwriting that lie beyond our linguistic borders. The following selection of 20th- and 21st-century plays in translation from Nigeria, Japan, India, Spain, Argentina and Ukraine offers a small taste of this, inviting the curious to embark on voyages of theatrical discovery that will enrich, entertain, enlighten, and inspire.

The following linked plays are currently free to view: Izumi Kyōka's Kerria Japonica; María Martínez Sierra's The Romantic Young Lady; Bratya Basu's The Final Night; Griselda Gambaro's The Gift.

Duro Ladipo, Oba Kò So (The King Did Not Hang), Nigeria, 1964

Credited both with ‘modernizing Yoruba festival drama’¹ and bringing it to international audiences, Duro Ladipo’s (1931-78) historical plays took Yoruba legends familiar to Nigerian audiences and ‘turned them into spectacular theatre’² , underscoring ‘themes, such as the abuse of power, that he considered relevant for his contemporary audience.’³ One of the most successful examples of this is Oba Kò So (The King Did Not Hang), first performed in 1964 and recently published, alongside other African and diasporic works, in Global Theatre Anthologies: Ancient, Indigenous and Modern Plays from Africa and the Diaspora.

Based on the legend of how King Ṣàngó became the Orisha of Thunder, the play sees the ruler exile one of his minor chiefs, Tìmì. When Tìmì, rather than suffering from this dismissal, establishes his own kingdom and thrives, Ṣàngó sends another of his chiefs, Gbọ̀ọ́nkáà, to bring Tìmì back and challenge him to combat. Aided by witchcraft, Gbọ̀ọ́nkáà beheads Tìmì and rebels against Ṣàngó. Surviving an attempt by Ṣàngó to execute him by fire, Gbọ̀ọ́nkáà deposes Ṣàngó, and sends him into exile. Cast out, Ṣàngó hangs himself, but is then elevated to the status of a deity, speaking triumphantly from the heavens. The published text of this epic tale of ambition, power, destiny and spirituality is in fact a transcript based on recordings from the original production, reflecting the importance in these plays (or operas) not only of the spoken, sung and chanted word, but also of music, dance, percussion, and great spectacle.

Izumi Kyōka, Kerria Japonica (山吹), Japan, 1923

Better known as a novelist during his lifetime, but more widely recognised as a dramatist since the 1950s, Izumi Kyōka’s (1873-1939) inclusion in the fascinating trans-national anthology Decadent Plays: 1890-1930⁴ offers a tantalising glimpse of Japanese theatre in the 1920s. Set amidst mountains lined with the eponymous wild roses, Kerria Japonica (山吹, 1923), translated by Cody M. Poulton, takes place in a natural riverside setting steeped in flora, fauna, folkloric symbols and religious tradition, but ‘pokes its nose at heteronormativity’ with a ‘subversion of traditional gender roles in Japan at the time.’⁵

On Saint Kōbō’s Day, a young Lady takes a room at an inn and poses as the wife of an Artist who is staying there. When her cover is blown, she begs the Artist for protection. Refused, and wary of the portent of a dead carp she finds on the riverbank, the Lady turns to a drunken Puppeteer, who requests that she beat him in exchange for his company. Initially reluctant, the Lady is soon thrashing him with gusto, so much so that the Artist intervenes. But the Puppeteer explains that he is seeking absolution through punishment for mistreating a woman in his youth. In turn, the Lady confesses that she is on the run from her abusive husband. She resolves to stay with the Puppeteer and beat him daily: ‘This man understands the sin of making a woman suffer, and now he wants to pay for it by being beaten night and day. I’ll become all the women of this world to avenge ourselves on this one man.’⁶

Read: Kerria Japonica (山吹)

María Martínez Sierra, The Romantic Young Lady (Sueño de una noche de Agosto), Spain, 1918

Meanwhile, Spain’s ‘most accomplished woman dramatist’⁷ was also encouraging audiences to rethink the balance of power between genders. It was not until after her death in 1974 that María Martínez Sierra (1874-1974) was finally acknowledged as the true author of many works originally credited to her husband, Gregorio. Martínez Sierra’s plays enjoyed great success at home and abroad, with English-language productions taking place in the 1920s in the West End and on Broadway, translated by the playwright, poet and novelist Helen Granville-Barker with her husband, the actor, director and playwright Harley Granville-Barker. A committed feminist who also collaborated as a librettist with Manuel de Falla, Spain’s most renowned classical composer, Martínez Sierra wrote works on many themes, including the ‘gently feminist’⁸ The Romantic Young Lady (Sueño de una noche de Agosto, 1918).

In this spirited Madrid-set comedy, young Rosario rails at the limitations for women as her three brothers live their lives freely and ambitiously. When a stranger climbs through her drawing-room window in search of a flyaway hat, an unexpected romance begins. Little does Rosario know that this apparition is a famous romance novelist. Persuaded by the stranger, who keeps his identity secret, to apply to be said writer’s new secretary, Rosario is initially outraged when she turns up for an interview and uncovers the deception. But, seeing that she may have met her match, egged on by her thrice-married grandmother, and sensing that she is the key to his novels’ female protagonists leading more fulfilling, independent lives, she eventually agrees to his offer: of being his secretary, but also of being his wife.

Read: The Romantic Young Lady (Sueño de una noche de Agosto)

Bratya Basu, The Final Night (অন্তিম রাত), India, 2023

To the Indian subcontinent next, and the works of playwright, actor, academic and politician Bratya Basu (b. 1969). Currently the Education Minister for West Bengal, Basu’s prolific playwriting career began in the 1990s and spans historical and political drama, the reinterpreting of classics, sexuality and gender, and crime and mystery. A selection of his most recent works, translated from Bangla by Mainak Banerjee and Arnab Banerji, was published in 2023 as An Anthology of Contemporary Bengali Plays.⁹

Written in the 21st century but set in August 1947, The Final Night (অন্তিম রাত, 2023) imagines the last conversation before the partition of India between the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and his daughter, Dina Wadia. As Jinnah’s sister Fatima attempts to keep the peace in their Mumbai home, father and daughter spar: he is frustrated at her refusal to revert to Islam or to visit the country he is about to lead, while she resents his pride in his place in history to the neglect of her, her son, and the memory of her late mother. As the evening progresses, Fatima, who raised Dina following her mother’s death, finds herself drawn into the fray. A meditation on the conflicting responsibilities of family, nation, faith, and personal ambition, the play is a welcome addition to the corpus of plays reflecting on this key moment of history that Anglophone audiences may be more accustomed to seeing from a largely British perspective.

Read: The Final Night (অন্তিম রাত)

Griselda Gambaro, The Gift (El don), Argentina, 2015

Deeply influenced by her own reading of the classics, and by the 20th century Argentine theatre tradition of the grotesco criollo, Griselda Gambaro (b.1928) is one of Latin America’s most prolific and influential playwrights, a ‘radical and subversive’ dramatist and ‘tireless witness to her country’s past, its legacy and ongoing reality'¹⁰, as her translator, Gwen MacKeith, notes. Largely self-taught and exiled during the Argentine dictatorship between 1977 and 1980, Gambaro returned to her home city of Buenos Aires where she has solidified her reputation as a leading literary voice.

Written while ‘at the height of her creative powers'¹¹, The Gift (El don, 2015) is one of Gambaro’s most recent works and evidences her signature blend of the classical and contemporary. The eponymous gift belongs to Márgara, an ageing clairvoyant who knits as she predicts the future of the world. Accustomed to drawing crowds, but weary of her prophesies of doom being rejected, she has taken instead to predicting hope and playfulness, green fields of plenty and galloping horses with vibrant plumes. But this too does her no good: her son-in-law Efraín, abusive to her daughter, Sonia, ejects them from the family home when Márgara fails to forecast a devastating storm that destroys his fishing fleet. The play’s ambiguous ending, in which a former client offers an outstretched hand to both mother and daughter when they are stranded on a beach, signifies the hope of emancipation amidst the desolation.

Read:The Gift (El don)

Natalya Vorozhbyt,Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha (Саша, вынеси мусор), Ukraine, 2014

Ukrainian writer Natalya Vorozhbyt’s (b. 1975) plays had already been produced in Sasha Dugdale’s English translations at the Royal Court (Bad Roads, 2017)¹² and the Royal Shakespeare Company (The Grain Store, 2009)¹³, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ignited interest throughout the Anglosphere in Ukrainian playwriting. First performed in English at Glasgow’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint¹⁵ in 2015 , Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha (Саша, вынеси мусор, 2014) was revived at London’s Finborough Theatre in the summer of 2022. One of several Ukrainian works published in Ukrainian Drama After the Euromaidan Revolution , the play might be considered Cassandra-like in its foretelling of the conflict that was set to erupt over the following decade.

The play begins in a Kyiv kitchen where a mother and daughter, Katya and Oksana, prepare food for the forthcoming funeral of the eponymous Sasha, an army reservist who died not in combat but of a domestic heart attack. As they cook, they converse with Sasha, who appears perhaps as a ghost, perhaps as a memory, chiding him for being a fairly useless husband and father but, as we discover, one whom they clearly miss. Dismissing his military service as little more than a hobby, Katya remarks that ‘There hasn’t been a war since anyone can remember’¹⁶ but, unbeknownst to her, Russia's annexation of Crimea and incursion in the Donbas are only a few short months away. Over a year later, in the play’s closing scene, Russian tanks are at the border and the army is enlisting recruits. To the women’s bemusement, Sasha re-appears. Despite being dead, he wants to report for duty.

That it should take a war for the English-speaking theatre to turn its attention to dramatists outside of the Anglophone North is regrettable. But that so much work by global playwrights is now being made available to theatre makers through the work of translators, researchers, dedicated companies, collectives, and publishers, is something to be celebrated. As I hope to have shown with this limited sample, the wide, diverse world of theatre in translation, more accessible to readers now than ever, is a destination to which it is well worth travelling.

Visit our Previously Featured Content page to view other topics including Decolonizing the Theatre Space, Devising Theatre, Interpreting Shakespeare: Discover the First Folio, The Plays of Caryl Churchill, Women in Shakespeare, Drama without Borders: Stories of migrants and refugees, The Climate Crisis in Theatre, Black British Playwrights, and LGBTQ+ Playwrights.