Theatre Translation from an Archival Perspective: Franca Rame and Surtitles

Speaker: Dr Anna Saroldi – Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Durham

This research seminar is a hybrid event & is free & open to all

• To join us in person come along to Room G74, Edith Morley building, University of Reading (Whiteknights campus)
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Dr Anna Saroldi’s paper focuses on Franca Rame (1929-2013), one of the most renowned theatre practitioners of the second half of the 20^th century. Together with her artistic partner and husband, Dario Fo (1926-2016), she wrote, directed, and performed more than thirty plays, among them the internationally acclaimed Accidental Death of an Anarchist and We won’t pay! We won’t’ pay!. This paper illuminates Rame’s pioneering role in the realm of audiovisual translation, with a specific focus on the transformative impact of theatre surtitles on her and Fo’s creative legacy, thanks to archival research at MusALab Verona. Rame’s agency in the translation process is explored, emphasizing her instrumental role in achieving international recognition for their work, despite the predominant acclaim reserved to Fo. A core case study delves into Rame’s performance of “It’s all Bed, Board, and Church” at the Joyce Theater, NY, in 1986, showcasing this seminal moment in theatre and political history, where surtitles played a pivotal role. A previously unidentified recording of this performance, archived at Emerson College, Boston, serves as a valuable resource, allowing for the examination of theatre translation as a live performance, shedding light on the performative aspects of translation (Marinetti, De Francisci 2022).

About our speaker:
Dr Anna Saroldi is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Durham. Previously, Anna lectured in Italian at the University of Oxford, where she obtained a DPhil in English Literature. Anna’s research focuses on translation and collaborative practices across English, Italian, and French in the 20^th and 21^st century. Anna has published on self-translation, heteroglossia, and retranslation from an archival perspective, in journals such as Ticontre, Translation in Society (and forthcoming in The Italianist).