Translating Marina Carr for a Brazilian audience: The interweaving of memories in theatre and translation

In this article, I wish to demonstrate how the theatre translator, when tailoring his/her translation to suit a particular theatre audience, resorts to creative strategies so as to establish dialogues between the exporting and importing cultures s/he is dealing with. Based on both my own translation of By the Bog of Cats. (1998), written by contemporary Irish playwright Marina Carr, and fieldwork carried out with a group of acting students in Florianopolis, Brazil (June 2010), this article shows how the Irish play, when translated into Brazilian Portuguese, creates layers of intertextuality with Brazilian-Azorean folklore and Brazilian theatre tradition, most particularly with Nelson Rodrigues's modern play Vestido de noiva [The Wedding Dress]. The local language of southern Brazil set in the mystically unsettling space of a bog invited the actors, the director, and the audience members to embark on a hybrid voyage to both familiar and foreign places.