About the Project

Apart from her profession as a translator, which she began in 1997, she has also worked as a freelance editor in Verlag der Autoren (Authors’ Publishers for plays in the German-speaking world) from 1998 to 2009.
As a translator her main area of interest lies in the plays and narrative literature from Great Britain, Canada and the USA, including the works of the Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing. Among the playwrights whose works she has translated are David Greig, Noah Haidle, Anthony Neilson, Bruce Norris and Simon Stephens.

In 2012 and 2014 Barbara Christ conducted the translators’ seminars held during the week-long workshop »Forum Theaterübersetzung« (Translation Forum) as part of the theatre biennale »Neue Stücke aus Europa« (New Plays from Europe), organised by the Staatstheater Wiesbaden in cooperation with ITI Germany. Since 2013 she has been conducting the international theatre translation workshops organised as part of the Mülheim Theatre Festival »Stücke«, and since 2016 also the translation workshop »Transfer« offered by the Children’s and Youth Theatre Centre (Kinder-und Jugendtheaterzentrums).

In 2012, she was awarded the Gottsched scholarship, and in 2020, the prestigious Brockes scholarship of the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds (German organisation for the promotion of literary translations). In 2014, she won the German Youth Theatre Prize along with David Greig. She lives in Frankfurt am Main.

(Translation from German by Amrita Dhara, 06.07.21)

His major productions include Cotton 56, Polyester 84, S*x, M*rality, and Cens*rship, Stories in a Song, Loretta, Blank Page, Words Have Been Uttered, Club Desire, and most recently, a re-imagining of the 1945 iconic play by Prithviraj Kapoor, Deewar.

Shanbag has worked extensively for television since 1985, developing programme concepts, researching, writing fiction and non-fiction material, and producing programmes, films, and series. He is an independent documentary filmmaker, and has been involved as a writer and researcher for large scale television projects such as “Bharat Ek Khoj” and “Surabhi”. He has also been actively involved in theatre training and documentation projects which include the book “Scenes We Made”, edited by Shanta Gokhale, which traces the history of experimental theatre in Mumbai from the late 1950s to the year 2000. Shanbag also has a penchant for placing plays within plays, using theatre to comment on the history of the form. Shanbag first used layering in the 2009 production, S*x, M*rality, and Cens*rship, written by Shanta Gokhale, which narrated the court case surrounding the censorship of Vijay Tendulkar’s play Sakharam Binder and commented on the sanitisation of Lavani and Tamasha. In all of these works, Shanbag has paid close attention to an accurate representation of historical details.

Shanbag was invited to perform a Gujarati adaptation of All's Well That Ends Well as part of the Globe-to-Globe festival in London, in which all 37 of Shakespeare's plays were performed in 37 different languages at Shakespeare's Globe. The play was well received in the UK press, with The Guardian giving it a four-star rating, and the Arts Desk stating, "Shakespeare's problem play is solved by a buoyant Gujarati staging from Mumbai." Titled “Maro Piyu Gayo Rangoon” in India, in 2014, the play was invited back to the Globe for another run of shows in a month that marked the 450th birth anniversary of Shakespeare.

Shanbag’s work is seen at major theatre festivals across the country and has also been presented over two seasons at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in London. He has been associated with Theater Freiburg in Germany as a senior artistic associate, for the stage adaptation of “God’s Little Soldier”, a novel by late Kiran Nagarkar. Sunil Shanbag is a part of the core team of SMART, India’s only strategic management programme for theatre. Sunil Shanbag has recently been awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for theatre direction, 2017.

His third book Sakina Manzil And Other Plays is a collection of eight plays, published by Orient  Blackswan in collaboration with the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU). He has written two extremely successful children’s plays based on the Grips theatre methodology: “The Boy Who Stopped Smiling” and “Medha and Zoombish”. 

His two poetry books “Conversations with a Peacock” and “To Sit on a Stone and other Shorts” have been published by Red River. He is the co-editor of “Babri Masjid – 25 Years on”, a book by Kalpaz and CSSS, conceptualised and curated by Dr. Sameena Dalwai.

Ramu was editor of PT Notes, a monthly theatre newsletter produced by Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai  for ten years. He also co-edited e-STQ (Seagull Theatre Quarterly) and has been writing columns on theatre plus social commentaries for national newspapers. He has conducted innumerable workshops and lectures, in which he has tried to reinstate the ideals of good taste, decent humour, intelligence and above all progressive values. 

One of the most politically conscious playwrights of our times, Ramu’s plays reflect the times we live in. Ramu Ramanthan meticulously researches his projects, historical processes are a cornerstone of  most of his writing and both politics and history together form the foundation of his work. 

His plays have been translated and performed into Indian and European languages. Ramu used to live in Mumbai — the city where many of his plays are situated. Commenting on his relationship with Mumbai in a detailed interview with the Mumbai Theatre Guide, he says, "Mumbai  is my lover. I love her and at the same time, I loathe her. To-date, even today, I discover something new in her. And that I’ve poured into the plays." As part of his research on the city and its culture, Ramu has catalogued an exhaustive reading list in the form of Literature that Celebrates Mumbai: A  List. 

More about Ramu Ramanthan’s work: https://www.mumbaitheatreguide.com/dramas/interviews/27-ramu-ramanathan-interview.asp#