Who’s afraid of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls?

Marietta Rialde, the “enfant terrible” of the Greek theatre world (Steen 2015: 42), was a feminist stage director, leading actress, playwright, and translator. One of the few women in the male-dominated Greek theatre of the 1960s–1980s, Rialde ran her own Experimental Theatre, acted, translated and wrote plays which address women’s and gender issues. When in 1984 she decided to direct and stage Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls (1983), in a translation by Marlena Georgiadi, she hit the headlines sparking heated debate. This essay shows that both Rialde and Georgiadi saw theatre translation as a social, political and activist praxis. Drawing on paratextual materials and the critical reception of this first Greek translation and staging of Top Girls, this article aims to discuss the contribution of theatre translation in Greece to placing feminism on the agenda and raising awareness in the pursuit of equity for women in a changing social landscape.