Worldmaking on Stage: Reporting and Remaking the Languages of the Dramatic Text

This article frames the idea of worldmaking in relation to translating Latin American theatre into English for performance. Worldmaking, at its most simple, proposes that we use language to shape the world and that the language of the world around us, in turn, shapes us. Nelson Goodman (1978) suggests that we “report” and “remake” constantly, in this way “reworlding” language. A reflection on Juan Gelman’s neologism “mundar” considers worldmaking as active poetic engagement. Then, an exploration of translating Chilean company LaFamiliaTeatro’s Painecur (2017), reflects on a process of worldmaking, asking how radical translational engagement with the dramatic text might become a way of reporting imaginaries of social justice and remaking them as interventions that alert us to the shaping and reshaping of our worlds.