Dramaturgical writing for theatrical productions in an educational institution like The University of Iowa frequently strays into illegal areas of copyright infringement when words or lines of a copyrighted play are cut from or altered in the text and subsequently, on stage. Ethically, this encroachment of the 'letter of the law' should concern all theatre artists-whether playwright, actor, director, dramaturg, stage manager, or department chair or other faculty sponsor-who are involved in all the aspects of a university production. Additionally, when the law is violated in this way, a production may be shut down by law enforcement authorities, although this measure is uncommon.
Therefore, in order for students legally to be able to
learn and practice various aspects of the playwriting craft and to hone
their translating skills, the copyright law in the United States (see below)
should be amended to allow a broader range of activities that use copyrighted
material in an educational setting.
There are numerous types of dramaturgical writing for
the theatre, most of which take place largely 'behind the scenes.' See
the appendix for definitions of dramaturgical playwriting terminology that
is employed as customary usage in the American theatrical field.
Dramaturgical writing comprises large amounts of research
that is communicated to directors and actors, printed in playbill essays
called program notes or in study guides, appears in marketing materials,
or is published as scholarly articles in academic journals. Dramaturgical
writing accompanies a dramatic production through its entire preproduction
and rehearsal processes and into the performance run.
The purpose of this investigation, however, is to provide
information on one type of writing that a student of dramaturgy (like a
professional dramaturg) creates that does appear on stage: the text of
a play that is a new translation of a foreign-language playscript or a
revision ('new version' or 'adaptation') of existing English source material-including
but not limited to plays. This dramaturgical writing creates a new playscript
for theatrical production at an educational institution. Yet this type
of writing most often is not considered 'original' playwriting by those
in theatre.
The primary aspects of a dramaturg's playwriting that will be elaborated, based on current professional practice, include:
The international document that governs the dramaturgical writing that creates a playscript based on existing source material is the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, signed in Switzerland by representatives of more than one hundred countries on 9 September 1886. The Berne Convention language, which is included in the United States Code, defines derivative work as: "a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation...dramatization...or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted" [emphasis added] (Berne 101). Obviously, by legal definition, this type of dramaturgical writing-whether it be translating from another language or adapting from an existing English source, even though it culminates in a unique playscript-is categorized not as original playwriting but only as derivative work.
The definitions discussed...and in practice
There is much recent debate in the literature of the theatre about how to accurately advertise derivative work that provides the playtext for dramatic productions. The terms translation, adaptation, and new version too often are used interchangeably but shouldn't be, because their accurate definitions can differ greatly. According to Joseph Farrell, "current usage allows the term 'translation' to stand for three distinct approaches: the literal translation, the performance version prepared by someone who may not have any knowledge of the original language, and finally the adaptation" (Farrell 47). But given the inherent differences in the results of 'translation,' it is necessary to separate the terms in order to clarify the discussion.
Because literal translations aren't necessarily stage-worthy but may be filled with intriguing nuance that has never been translated or was lost or altered in outdated translations, the literal work is an understandable starting point for a dramaturgical writer preparing a new version of a play. Many playwrights who otherwise create original work also undertake dramaturgical playwriting-they rewrite a classic play by revising the language of a literal translation prepared by a professional translator into a new version or adaptation for performance. Literal translations, often academic and heavily footnoted, are especially useful if the dramaturgical writer creating a new playscript is not familiar with the source language. To academic or literal translators, the dramaturgical writer's practice is considered only as adaptation rather than as translation. Literal translations are not considered works of creative writing but are instead valued for their accuracy. And most dramaturgical writers freely admit that they aren't translators, especially when they don't know the source language.
Artistic directors in the theatre have some justifiable cause in fearing that a literal translation would not be suitable for staging. Declan Donnellan, a successful director, writer, and co-creator of the British theatre company Cheek By Jowl, relates an anecdote about a translator he felt was showing off. As director, Donnellan knew a certain line would never see the light of the stage. "There is a line in Ibsen that says, 'This house smells of death,' translated recently as 'It has a posthumous air about it'" (Donnellan 78). No wonder the creative services of playwrights or dramaturgs are required to bolster or amend literal translations!
Translator Noel Clark (among many others) urges as much descriptive clarity as possible when advertising a production that uses a new translation of a play. "The play-goer with no access to the original will be misled if what he has paid to see is described as 'a new translation by A' rather than, say, 'a version by A, based on a translation by B'" (Clark 25). Yet in some European theatres, for example, literal translators are never publicly acknowledged for their contributions to a playscript's genesis. This is generally because the field of translation is so much larger and more common on the continent that it is seen as a simple necessity.
Citing economic and marketing factors, one adapter states a widely held belief among impresarios, producers, and artistic directors who are responsible for selecting the updated versions of classic plays that get produced on their stages: "The rise of the translator/adapter and the 'new version,' which came into prominence in the mid to late eighties, [is] directly linked to a conservative impulse in the theatre" (Dear 279). It makes financial sense to produce an already-successful play rather than risk a loss on the unknown quantity of tickets that might (or might not) sell for an entirely new play. Thus, an adaptation or new version (rather than merely a revival production) of a well-known play like Eugène Ionesco's le rhinocéros, for example, resonates in new ways in our time while it also draws ticket buyers who are aware of the playwright's past successes.
David Johnston, introducing his edited collection of essays
in which Farrell, Clark, and others write, suggests, "'straightforward'
translation and adaptation/new version come to represent opposite poles
of fidelity-rightful inheritor, upright and true, and bastard child, wickedly
lively and devil-may-care" (Johnston 8). He implies that theatre purists
may not be as interested in adaptations as in new translations, even though
the differences may be primarily semantic in many cases.
Illegitimate or not (and most theatre artists would say
not), the spirited attitude of adaptation is exemplified by the dramaturgical
writer/playwright Nick Dear in explaining his process. "What I have tended
to do is take the original play and treat is as if it were a first draft
of my own, which I then rework, reshape, and do with whatever I want to,"
says Dear (273). His unapologetic process offers perhaps the best method
to update clanking language or colloquialisms, outmoded plot elements,
cobweb-covered characterizations, or any other dated or confusing aspects
of the original source material.
This freedom to alter the original is supported by a concern
about the potential success of the final product that is produced for audiences.
Farrell writes, "For some theatre-goers, the prime concern in an evening's
theatre is the quality of the work staged before them, not with whether
it corresponds to some unknown original written in a far-off land for which
they care little" (Farrell 53). This attitude suggests that if an old or
foreign script can be successfully re-envisioned for a contemporary audience,
it should be.
Dear refutes the very art he and other dramaturgical
writers engage in, however, as less skilled than original playwriting.
"Adaptation has become almost as applauded as original play writing, [yet]
it's much easier than original play writing, vastly easier than dreaming
up your own story and making it work on the stage" (Dear 275).
The actual writing work for a new version (translated and/or adapted) and for an original play, apart from the important matter of inspiration, seems to consist of basically the same set of tasks. But it isn't, as any original playwright would attest, as Farrell does. "The translator...does not create structure, plot, character, or momentum" (Farrell 53). These are the vital elements that may take an original playwright several years to write, versus a dramaturgical writer's work of perhaps only several months to prepare a new version.
Yet "the translator has to write the dialogue...it must therefore be approached in the same way that a writer would tackle it, with two differences," notes one prolific translator. "Basic dramaturgical decisions have already been made by the original dramatist. This is a freedom. Yet the translator is limited to a mode of expression he or she can at most recreate, not originate. This is a responsibility" (Vivis 39). No dramaturgical writer, in preparing a new translation or adaptation for the stage, can take this charge lightly. To be successfully staged, the new playscript must affect or entertain its audience, just as an original play must. This acknowledgement of the impact of audience is the crux of the similarity, repeatedly cited by original playwrights as well as by dramaturgs who translate and adapt plays. The question is always 'does it "work" or not?'
As dramaturgical writers, even playwrights who do compose original work, when they are translating or adapting an existing playscript, function merely as creative scribes. "It is undoubtably an eery, disorienting sensation to have written every word uttered by the characters, to have solved the various problems of idiom and tone that inevitably arise, to have devised arresting phrases and witty repartee, and yet to realise that the play is not yours and the that the primal inspiration cannot be attributed to you" (Farrell 46). And yet this is the case for the author of the new version of a playscript that is based on an existing original source.
Once a new playscript is being directed for a stage production, its creator is for all practical purposes, the author (Meyer 134-135). And yet, the new playscript author must seek to sustain "the spirit of the [original] play," says Donnellan (78).
This is accomplished by the writer offering fresh language and other aspects of her or his own voice while maintaining what is most vital in the original work. The writer Adrian Mitchell echoes this idea. Creating a new version, he says, "is to take a great play...and reveal it. That's all....Of course, it shouldn't have any of this dead stuff hanging from it, archaic stuff that makes people stop and say 'I don't know what that means'" (Mitchell 243). And making meaning for a contemporary audience is the essence of creating the art of theatrical moments in a new version of a play.
The playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie has successfully translated a number of playscripts and describes his approach to this work with another clarifying image, one intrinsic also in his Buddhist attitude toward life. It is notable for calmness, openness, and clarity of vision-a vision that van Itallie acknowledges originated with a previous writer (of the source material).
Why bother to adapt?
Writing in French in 1959, Eugène Ionesco began his play, le rhinocéros, with a female grocer uttering the line, "Ah, celle-lá! Ah, celle- lá, elle est fière. Elle ne veut plus de acheter chez nous" (Ionesco, 1959, 14). Literally translated, the line says, 'Oh, that (female) one there! That (female) one there, she is stuck-up. She is no longer able to buy with us.' The original English translation by a Briton, Derek Prouse, attributes the opening line to The Grocer's Wife, who begins, "Oh that woman gets on my nerves! Too stuck-up to buy from us nowadays" (Ionesco, 1960, 9). Now 40 years after the play first appeared in publication and production, the same line in a dramaturgy student's new, unpublished (and illegal) translation and adaptation of the play3 reads: "Oh, that one! Check her out, walking right on by! She's working my last nerve-too stuck-up to buy from us."
The successive alterations in the line may seem subtle here but numerous linguistic and other updates are painted in broad strokes elsewhere in the new text because the English language continues to change over time. Situations like this are addressed at London's Royal National Theatre where many new translations, adaptations, and new versions of classic literature or canonical playscripts have been produced in the 1980s and 90s. A former artistic director there shares a common reason why this is so. "A translation ha[s] a shelf life of about 10 years and then the language starts to go out of date" (Dear 274). One translator doubles that figure, saying, "contemporary translations tend to date after about 20 years" (Meyer 132). So a 40-year-old play like le rhinocéros, with a theme that still makes an audience think, seems to be a prime candidate for a new translation and/or adaptation.
And although "this procedure would not be tolerated in any other literary genre" (Farrell 54), Jacek Laskowski, an established translator and former literary manager of a major London theatre, proffers one explanation for why it happens in dramatic writing. "Translating well-worn texts is a little like mountaineering: just because someone else has already conquered the peak does not mean everyone else has to abandon the climb. You may not be the first to get to the summit, you may not even do it most gloriously, but there is a purpose to your journey. The purpose is in the need of the moment. And theatre is the art of moments...infinitely variable" (Laskowski 187). Not only does theatre provide this art of moments, but the varied processes that create dramatic texts for staging are sustained because they contain this art. Understanding, considering, and mastering all the details of voice, resonance, purpose, and meaning are the challenge for every writer who has ever tackled translating or adapting.
Other reasons to produce the new playtext of Rhinoceros
accrue. American English has always been more casual than the English of
the United Kingdom, not to mention less formal than the original French.
French polite forms of address sound stilted in English translation. Peter
Meyer, a successful translator of French drama into English notes, "A...cut
that is nearly always necessary is the use of all those Monsieurs and Madames,
which are an essential feature of French conversation but do not fit easily
into English speech patterns. Indeed French words of any sort should be
retained with reluctance...." (Meyer 134).
The way French speakers use language can be substantially
different than the way English speakers do. Although a French sentence
may end with several descriptive terms to provide emphasis, a direct translation
into English of all these words sounds merely effusive. While it is useful
to consult a literal translation that includes each word, often the best,
single word should be written in the performance version and the other
choices simply deleted. The French and English languages function differently
in order to make similar points, and this must be accepted and worked with
during the translation process. Writing a new version also allows for more
inclusive language to be used, such as firefighter instead of fireman.
"Names can sometimes be a problem," Meyer continues (134). In the new Rhinoceros, French first names (and occasionally surnames) of the characters have been updated and recast as common American first names: Barry instead of Berenger, Jon instead of Jean, Danielle instead of Daisy, Mr. Pallon instead of Monsieur Papillon, David for Monsieur Dudard, and Bill for Monsieur Botard.
Because the original play seems, to a current-day adapter, unnecessarily weighted with male characters, the new text makes the logician a woman and a mathematics professor and revises the relationship of the grocer and his wife to lesbian partners who own and manage a delicatessen. The only thing that is lost is an overtly chauvinistic marriage relationship of the 1950s.
The setting is now American in its location and its references
but the plot points and structure of the original are retained. The new
version of Rhinoceros is therefore most accurately described, however wordy
the label sounds, as an adaptation by Gandrow of the new translation by
Akyea and Gandrow of the original play by Ionesco. "As a rule of thumb,
a translation becomes an adaptation when the transformation involved is
more than linguistic," notes Farrell (51). This new version of Rhinoceros
provides an apt case in point, with its changes to elements such as names,
characterizations, and setting.
How to handle a prevailing sense of foreignness in a
play being translated also is much debated. Certain well-known English
translators create such British versions of foreign-language plays that
the original sensibilities of the characters are completely Anglicized
and therefore no longer make sense. While the language of these works might
be idiomatically seamless, a vital sense of otherness is unfortunately
excised by the complete rewriting that is done to the language. What existed
in the play that originally made audiences respond must be deftly added
to the translator's recipe, not be flattened into mush for ease of digestion
by today's audiences.
In le rhinocéros, written in an absurdist genre,4 this dilution of meaning or foreignness is not a problem. The "rhinoceritis" that affects the characters is never defined as the fascism to which Ionesco was, in fact, referring. So the play's pervading sense of conformism can be seen by today's audiences in light of some perceived problem in contemporary society, such as mass commercialization or the forces of the political right.
Although the play's original characters happen to speak French, Ionesco was a native Romanian and had himself adopted the language and culture of France while living in exile there. His characters, rather than being purely French, are essentially humanist, concerned with human relationships, interactions, connections, and allegiances. So le rhinocéros lends itself easily to revision into another language, and in fact, one seems long overdue in American English.
Copyright considerations regarding Rhinoceros
The absence of a contemporary American English translation is most likely because the original English translation by Derek Prouse was granted exclusive rights and is still under copyright. Section 102 of the U. S. Code makes clear that "copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression...[that] include dramatic works" (Berne 102). Although copyright laws pertaining to newer work have changed during recent decades, the case study play for this investigation, le rhinocéros, was first published in French in 1959 and was first translated into English in 1960, when its copyright protection for both versions began. The period extends 75 years from the publication date (Singer 6).
"If the exclusive adaptation rights have already been granted to someone else, then the underlying rights owner won't be able to grant a second set of rights to you simultaneously, and your project must be tabled" advises a lawyer and former associate director of the Dramatists Guild, Dana Singer (65). Although this comment rings with a sense of finality, until a query to the copyright holder is made and a response is received, there is no way of knowing whether permission to proceed with a new version of any sort might be given.
In a professional situation such as a nonprofit or commercial theatre, the work on a new version would not be started without appropriate permission first being granted. In an educational setting, however, the initial work was undertaken as a dramaturgical exercise in dramatic translation. Once the new translation sparked additional intellectual questions about the limitations of the translation and how the play might be presented on stage, the adaptation was begun.
Because no permissions have been sought or granted, the new Rhinoceros text is unproduceable, legally. Seventy-five years have not yet passed, the copyright still exists for both the original play and for the original translation. Because the copyright protection has not expired, the work is not yet considered to be in the public domain and is protected from any uses not authorized by the holder of the copyright. "The copyright in the derivative work...remains dependent on the rights granted by the underlying [copy]rights owner[s]" (Singer 62).
To be legally allowed to translate and then write a derivative work like Rhinoceros for a public reading or production at a university (or elsewhere), even as the academic exercise for which it was created, the rights for a translation and for an adaptation must be requested and received. While there are limited educational purposes known as "fair use" that do not infringe upon a work's copyright, nearly any public recitation or performance of a work outside of a classroom still violates copyright law. Section 107 of U. S. Copyright Law is entitled "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use." Relevant parts of it in this case state: "...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching... scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright" (Berne 107). Translating the original play anew, adapting it to modern American circumstances, and producing it as either a reading or a staging in a university theatre go far beyond the acceptable categories of fair use.
Permission requests, 'how-to' information
In the United States, nearly all rights to produce a copyrighted
play-in any form, whether "as is" or adapted in some way-must be obtained
from the publisher of the acting edition of the play such as Dramatists
Play Service, the Dramatic Publishing Company, or in the case of Rhinoceros
(the Derek Prouse translation), from Samuel French, Inc. There is generally
a fee involved for opening night and each successive performance, depending
on the circumstances of the theatre and the production for which the rights
are requested. The standard fees listed for Rhinoceros in the Samuel French
catalog are $50 for the first performance and $35 for each successive performance
(Samuel French 174). In this case, which began with a new translation of
the original French play (but in which the final product goes beyond that
and also beyond the scope of the original translation), additional rights
may need to be granted by the copyright holder of the French work. Whether
this is required can also be verified by Samuel French.
In the standard contract for a license to produce a play,
specific language about using the playscript intact is always included,
such as: "No one has the right to make any changes in the Work without
the prior written permission of the Author, and any changes that are made
also remain the Author's property" (Singer 241). The right to adapt a playscript
is less often granted than the right to perform it in its original form.
So finding and implementing the 'perfect' cut or alteration in the dialogue
not only violates the contractual agreement to produce the play intact,
but the work done on changes reverts to the original author's or copyright
holder's ownership, it is not even the adapting writer's property. Unless
permission is granted to adapt someone else's original work, an adapter
has no rights associated with the derivative work that is created (Singer
63). What this means, in this case, is that in the absence of permission
to translate and adapt, the student's new version is as much the property
of the copyright holder of the original work as the original work itself.
This ownership may be difficult to understand for the translator or adapter
who has invested weeks, months, even years of time into creating the new
version.
In the absence of the knowledge of which publisher to
contact, one also can determine whether a source work is still protected
by copyright by conducting a copyright search at the U. S. Copyright Office
at the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., or requesting that a search
be conducted5, for a fee.6 For a staff researcher to find whether a work
is still protected by its copyright costs approximately $20. Finding the
owner and how to reach her or him may cost double that amount (Singer 64).
In requesting any permission(s) for translating or adapting from the copyright holder of an original work, as much information as possible about the desired use must be communicated. For the case study of the student's Rhinoceros adaptation, for example, the circumstances to be conveyed in the permission request are as follows:
(2) The play will be presented in two ways. First, a staged reading will take place on The University of Iowa campus for two performances in a theatre space that seats fewer than 150 people. Textual revisions may occur as a result. Then, a production with a budget of approximately $300 will take place on The University of Iowa campus (it may or may not be the same theatre in which the reading took place) for two or three performances in a theatre space that seats fewer than 150 people. Admission will not be charged for either the reading or the production.
(3) If, at a later date, the adapter or any theatrical producer wishes to again stage the new version of the play, additional permission for performances will be requested.
(4) The adapter requests the opportunity to seek a publisher
for the new version of the playscript.
Because Ionesco's original play is world-famous, there
seems little doubt that if any permission to translate, adapt, or produce
a new version is granted, payment for such rights will need to be negotiated.
Given the adapter's status as a full-time student and the limited means
of production desired, it is possible that the fee would be nominal. From
the adapter's position, any fee is almost unmanageable and may preclude
any of the performances from happening unless the copyright holder agrees
that admission may be charged to recoup the fee.
Conclusions about standard practice
In practice, when a new text is in production, the next step frequently taken is illegal, though common at Iowa and elsewhere in educational institutions. The director, or in this case, the adapter, director, and university faculty advisors, then ignore the limitations imposed with the permission and produce the play with lines altered or other aspects of the original play changed. In this (and similar cases), it is openly acknowledged by those involved that fair use of the copyrighted material is being violated, but that if the faculty advisors 'look the other way,' it doesn't matter what the students do in the pursuit of education, because little harm (no financial loss for the copyright holder) but several benefits (learning for the involved students) can be found in their actions.
Ironically, while serving as a professional theatrical production dramaturg (when not the writer of the play being staged), a dramaturg typically acts throughout the rehearsal and production processes as a safeguard for the playwright's voice, words, and intent. Taken literally, the dramaturgical function is not unlike that of copyright: to protect the work of the playwright and uphold its use intact.
For a graduate-level student who is only months away from a professional position in a regular nonprofit or commercial theatre, being sanctioned to work illegally in while school does not seem an appropriate caution against undertaking similar circumstances in the 'real world.' Perhaps the cliché 'do as I say, not as I do' is true in other educational situations, as well, that simply do not resemble business circumstances one might encounter after graduating and beginning to work in a profession.
Unless a student translator/adapter may be given the appropriate permission to undertake these tasks as an educational exercise that culminates in theatrical production in the same way that other academic work for theatre students does, it seems that what has become accepted practice is to illegally manipulate original material.
This system will not soon change unless federal copyright law is amended to allow a broader definition of fair use in an educational setting. The law should be expanded to allow a new translation or adaptation of an original play to be performed outside the classroom in either a staged reading or a more full production (or both). In playwriting education, the best way for a writer to create a successful playscript is to hear it or see it performed, and to revise the text afterwards. Unless the law is amended, the dramaturgical writer/playwright who translates or adapts existing work is legally barred from these opportunities.
Following is the terminology that is employed as customary usage in the American theatrical field.
Foremost is the usage of the title dramaturg7 for a person who collaborates in various ways during the playwriting or production processes with a playwright and/or director. A dramaturg provides the playwright an informed reading of the text. During the rehearsal process, a dramaturg offers the director an knowledgeable and objective view of the action as it is taking shape.
Derivative work is the legal label for writing that contains aspects taken from one or more original sources and revised in some way.
A literal translation is a word-for-word version of an original play that is translated into a secondary language. It may or may not be grammatically correct in the latter language, but a good literal translation is footnoted with explanations of idiomatic expressions or other original words that cannot adequately be translated into the secondary language. A literal translation is considered academically precise, but generally is not a playscript that can be successfully staged.
Somewhat confusingly, a new translation of a play that is used as the acting edition (a single playscript published with no introduction but only the text in a plain paper cover, in most cases) for a production might be assumed by the layperson to be a literal translation, but only rarely is, in the strictest sense. Professional translators have long accepted that translation from one language to another is a flexible art rather than an exact science, but a new translation tends, at a minimum, to maintain the structure, plot, characters, and setting of the original work.
An adaptation, sometimes called a new version or a performance version, can be derived from one or more of several forms of original material. (Any of these also may be used as the acting edition.) If the source is a play in a foreign language, the adaptation may be created from a new, or perhaps existing, literal translation. Less common but also possible is an adaptation of an existing acting edition that is a translation of a playscript.
Adaptations also are derived from sources other than plays, such as poetry (e.g., T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and the contemporary musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats), or fiction, nonfiction, historical documents and publications, even news articles. Among the multiple sources from which a writer might derive work are copyrighted or 'public domain' (see below) foreign and English work, including original, translated, adapted, and revived work (Langley 131-132). Adaptations might alter characters, plot, setting, organization, or other aspects of the original text.
Work considered to be in the public domain is that which no longer is protected by copyright (or never was, in the case of manuscripts that predate the 19th century).
1 Title phrase from Joseph Farrell, "Servant of Many Masters," Stages of Translation, 46.
2 From "Translating the Famous Dead, the Dead Obscure, and the Living," Stages of Translation, 189.
3 A new version of the play (the case study) is titled Rhinoceros, translation by Modei Akyea and Kristen Gandrow, adaptation by Kristen Gandrow.
4 For the best discussion of this genre, see Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969.
5 The Copyright Office publishes Circular 22, "How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work," which contains a search request form, or a personal letter may request that a search be conducted by a staff person in the Reference and Bibliography Section of the Copyright Office (Singer 63).
6 To determine the approximate fee, one must call the office at (202)707-6850 and provide the researcher with as much relevant information as possible (Singer 64).
7 Currently in the American dramaturgy field there is a grassroots movement
to get publishers of dictionaries and other periodicals' stylebooks to
change their consistent misspelling and inaccurate definition of the word
'dramaturg.' The French dramaturge (also the English 'dramaturge') and
the German Dramaturg refer specifically and only to a playwright.
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (9 Sept. 1886). Legal Information Institute. 17 U.S.C. §101, 102, 107. Available from: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.text.html; Internet.
Bryer, Jackson R., ed. The Playwright’s Art. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Donnellan, Declan. “Interview, The Translatable and the Untranslatable,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 75-80.
Farrell, Joseph. “Servant of Many Masters,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 45-56.
Gandrow, Kristen. Rhinoceros. ts., The University of Iowa, 1999.
Ionesco, Eugène. le rhinocéros. Montrouge (Seine), France: Librairie Gallimard, 1959.
Ionesco, Eugène. Rhinoceros. Derek Prouse, Trans. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd.,1973, 9-124.
Langley, Stephen. Theatre Management and Production in America. 1990.
Laskowski, Jacek. “Translating the Famous Dead, the Dead Obscure, and the Living,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 187-198.
Meyer, Peter. “Thoughts on Translating French Plays,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 131-136.
Mitchell, Adrian. “Interview, Poetry on Stage,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 239-248.
Samuel French, Inc. 1997 Basic Catalogue of Plays and Musicals. New York: Samuel French, 1997.
Singer, Dana. Stage Writers Handbook. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997.
Vivis, Anthony. “The Stages of a Translation,” in Stages of Translation. Bath, England: Absolute Classics, an imprint of Absolute Press, 1996, 35-44.