What If the Past Returns? Translating Older Theatre Texts and Performing Remains

The article is an attempt to transfer into the field of translation studies selected theories of performance and of performative strategies of establishing relations with the past. The author seeks to define the act of translating old theatrical texts – a fragmentary trace of the Italian dell’arte, a theatrical practice which is forgotten yet paradoxically still reproduced based on specific principles – as “performing remains”. The term is borrowed from Rebecca Schneider, an American performance scholar who introduced it into contemporary humanities in her book Performing Remains. Art and War in Time of Theatrical Reenactment (2011) to describe the theatrical reconstructions of historical events and artistic transformations of historical performances. The tensions between the material and non-material traces of the past and the possibilities of their contemporary transformation in performative actions, as described by Schneider, provide a point of departure for reflecting on the act of translating as an epistemological tool for constructing knowledge about the past and, at the same time, for making the past present in a performative way.  

The article is an attempt to transfer into the field of translation studies selected theories of performance and of performative strategies of establishing relations with the past. The author seeks to define the act of translating old theatrical texts – a fragmentary trace of the Italian dell’arte, a theatrical practice which is forgotten yet paradoxically still reproduced based on specific principles – as “performing remains”. The term is borrowed from Rebecca Schneider, an American performance scholar who introduced it into contemporary humanities in her book Performing Remains. Art and War in Time of Theatrical Reenactment (2011) to describe the theatrical reconstructions of historical events and artistic transformations of historical performances. The tensions between the material and non-material traces of the past and the possibilities of their contemporary transformation in performative actions, as described by Schneider, provide a point of departure for reflecting on the act of translating as an epistemological tool for constructing knowledge about the past and, at the same time, for making the past present in a performative way.