John Collins, renowned for his epic Gatz, directs Irish film and theatre actor Lisa Dwan in Studio Créole for the Manchester International Festival, a performance piece that reinvents the language lab to create a new live experience for audiences.
Celebrated for her work performing both dramatic and prose pieces by Samuel Beckett, Dwan joins seven acclaimed authors from seven countries. They have each written a new short story and it has its world première at MIF19, before being staged in other cities around the world.
Words will be live-translated by an interpreter into English, a version fed via an earpiece to Lisa Dwan who—moving around the space, between writers, interpreters and audience—will offer a performative interpretation of the original text. Audience members, wearing bone conduction headphones, will simultaneously listen to the story in its original language and also in the actor’s English version.
Audience members will receive an exclusive book featuring the short stories.