What’s a cottage to you? The case of Stacey Gregg’s Override on the Brazilian stage

Abstract

In this essay, I examine my own translation for the stage of Northern Irish Stacey Gregg’s Override (2013), produced by Cia Ludens, under the title Controle Manual, in 2023. Here I retrospectively analyse my own translation choices, with a focus on cultural, linguistic, and discursive aspects on the translation with a view towards a stage reading. I also explore how the play may have been received in São Paulo, Brazil, reflecting on the stage reading’s post-show debate. My main objective is thus to consider the importance of a dramaturgical consciousness in theatre translation, in which the theatre translator, as an expert in both source and target cultures, works as a creative agent in the theatre scene. The translator as dramaturge (Pavis 1992) works as an important interlocutor not only between two different theatre systems and traditions, but also as a sensitive interpreter of some of the pressing issues of her own time.