TRANSLATION OF JON FOSSE

TRANSLATING & DIRECTING JON FOSSE (2023 NOBEL LAUREATE) FROM NORWEGIAN INTO AMERICAN-ENGLISH

“FIERCE POETIC SIMPLICITY”
– ANITA GATES, THE NEW YORK TIMES (ON DEATHVARIATIONS, 2006)

“A FEELING UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE I WAS SEEING IN THE THEATER.“
– BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES (REFLECTING ON SEEING THE 2012 PRODUCTION OF A SUMMER DAY, 2023)

In 2003, when Sunde started working with Jon Fosse and his text NATTA SYNG SINE SONGAR (NIGHT SINGS ITS SONGS) with a plan to direct his U.S. debut production, she realized that in order for this work to reach the hearts and minds of a New York audience, she would need to translate the work herself. As an American with a Norwegian father, Sunde had learned the language when she lived and went to school in Norway as a 12-year old. She was instinctively aware of the complications and limitations of the British translations. With Fosse’s encouragement, Sunde set out to create her own American-English translation – the first of a Jon Fosse play, specifically for a New York production.

It was a long and challenging process, but a fruitful one. It became clear that there was a lack of awareness about the need for theatrical translations into American-English. Together with artist/dramaturg Marie-Louise Miller, she started the Translation Think Tank as an arm of Theatre without Borders to advocate for the “art of translation” in venues around the country.
In order to produce Jon Fosse’s plays, Sunde teamed up with Norwegian actor and producer Anna Gutto (now a film director and screenwriter) and together they created Oslo Elsewhere in 2004. Oslo Elsewhere’s mission was to bring the most innovative plays and ideas about contemporary theater from Norway to the United States, and vice versa.

Sunde and Gutto were passionate about developing new translations to their fullest potential and producing bold, relevant, fiercely theatrical plays; plays with space, plays with a pulse, plays that would challenge our sensibilities and provoke our audience beyond the everyday. From 2004-2008, Oslo Elsewhere produced three major projects at 59E59 Theaters and 45 Bleecker and has continued to be active in commissioning translations on a small scale since then. To date, Sunde has translated six Fosse plays and a handful of other works by Norwegian writers. DEATHVARIATIONS and SA KA LA are published by PAJ (Performing Arts Journal), and an excerpt of NIGHT SINGS ITS SONGS is available through Words Without Borders.

“In translating plays there are always things that are ‘untranslatable’. That is the challenge. Plays are meant to be experienced live, one cannot simply translate text; one must translate the action that lies underneath the text. Action will always be cultural. So will subtleties and humor. Therefore, it is imperative to translate specifically for the culture that one is working in and to translate specifically for production.”

–Sarah Cameron Sunde