Our Success is Measured in the Success of Others
Over Covid 19, to help keep artists employed and ensure continued creative dialogue across distance, language & culture, Bouche Theatre Collective connected playwrights & translators, commissioned translations, and developed the new texts.
We are thrilled our pandemic commission Antigone in Spring has reached publication!
Publisher: Talonbooks
ANTIGONE IN SPRING
By Nathalie Boisvert
Translated by Hugh Hazelton
Translated from Antiogone au printemps
More Info: www.talonbooks.com
Inspired by the classic play by Sophocles, Antigone in Spring takes us to a fictional Québec where dead birds fall from the sky, covering highways, rooftops, and parks. The citizens demand an explanation, but the answer never comes; the government, led by the autocratic Creon, refuses to tell the truth. A revolution is brewing, however, and the population’s youth and their supporters, inflamed by the unprecedented ecological disaster, are calling for freedom. Amid this upheaval, Antigone and her brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, narrate their tale. Born into a happy family that flees to their cottage in Rivière-Éternité every summer, they lived in the certainty that the world was a safe place of warmth and honesty. But when they accidentally learn the truth – that their mother Jocasta is married to her own son, Oedipus, who is both their father and their brother – everything falls apart, and the three siblings are caught up in the revolution sweeping through the city.
Written in free verse and fuelled by the courage and integrity of the protesters during the student demonstrations that rocked the streets of Montréal in 2012, Antigone in Spring is an ode to all the revolutions whose stories remain untold.
This translation was commissioned by Bouche Theatre Collective and developed in association with Presence Theatre (UK). We gratfully appreceiate the support of Canada Council for the Arts.
Meet the Playwrights & Translator
Nathalie Boisvert
Nathalie Boisvert (she, her, hers) holds a bachelor’s degree in acting and a master’s degree in drama from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1993). In 1997, her first play, L’histoire sordide de Conrad B., was performed at the Festival de Spa (Belgium), remounted in Brussels and translated into English by Bobby Theodore. In 1999, her work, L’été des Martiens (Lansman) premiered simultaneously in Quebec (Théâtre Niveau Parking) and France (La Comédie de la Mandoune) and again produced simultaneously in 2006 in Dusseldorf (Landstheatre) and Berlin (Grips) in German translation by Frank Heibert. Translated into English by Bobby Theodore, it was also produced in 2002 by Theatre Direct (Toronto). In 2006, her play Vie et Mort d’un village, received lauréate des Journées de Lyon (Éditions Comp’Act) and she received le Prix Gratien-Gélinas in 2007 for Buffet chinois. Her Antigone au printemps was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General’s Award French Language Drama and received the Prix Émile-Augier. Antigone is currently being translated to English by Hugh Hazelton.
Hugh Hazelton
Hugh Hazelton (he, him) is a Montreal writer and translator who specializes in Quebec and Latin American literature. He has written four books of poetry, including Antimatter (Broken Jaw Press, 2nd edition, with CD, 2010), as well as Latinocanadá: A Critical Study of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), which received the Best Book of the Year award from the Canadian Association of Hispanists. He has translated twenty works of poetry, theatre and fiction from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English. His latest translations are Volume I of the complete works of the Argentine avant-garde poet Oliverio Girondo (Wolsak & Wynn, 2018), and The Doorman of Windsor Station, a play by Julie Vincent (Playwrights Canada Press, 2017). His translation of Vétiver, a book of poems by Joël Des Rosiers, won the Governor General’s award for French-English translation in 2006. He is a professor emeritus of Spanish at Concordia University in Montreal and former co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. In 2016 he received the Linda Garboriau Award from the Banff Centre for his work on behalf of literary translation in Canada, and in 2018 he was awarded the Prix de poésie Lèvres urbaines by Les Écrits des Forges for his dedication to the advancement of poetry. He is an honorary member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.
Translation & Development: Antigone in Spring
International Translation Workshop: Antigone in the Spring
By Nathalie Boisvert | Translated by Hugh Hazelton
Presence Theatre in association with Bouche Theatre Collective
Monday Jan. 31, 2022 – 11 AM Pacific / 1 PM Eastern | 7 PM Greenwich Mean
FFREE DIGITAL EVENT
We gratefully acknowledge the support of
