HAPPY BEYOND ...happy
Short play virtual reading series
“Untranslatable words possess considerable power and potential. For a start, they allow us to give voice to sensations we’ve hazily experienced but previously lacked the ability to vocalize. In that way, they enable us to conceptualize familiar feelings, such as happiness, with greater clarity by helping us to sift these into finer-grained elements. More intriguingly, they may even introduce us to new phenomena that had previously been veiled to us and that we perhaps hadn’t suspected existed. Truly, such words can expand our horizons, and even usher us into new worlds.” – Tim Lomas PhD
2021 promises to be better than its predecessor; and we too at Spooky Action Theater want to experience brighter horizons. With New Works in Action’s Call for New Plays: Happy Beyond ...happy, we issue a challenge to our favorite playwrights to supply the words that we don’t have for complicated feelings we experience. As fodder for theatrical thinking, and inspired by Dr. Lomas’s Happiness Found in Translation, we’ve compiled a list of “happiness words” that do not directly translate into English.
Take this list as a prompt and send us an original short* play to be read/workshopped and possibly produced as part of Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action for 2021.
That’s your challenge; take one of these untranslatable words and define it in a play.
Selection Qualifications:
About the Program
New Works in Action (NWIA) aims to host a play development experience that is playwright-centered. All plays are read and evaluated by at least one Spooky Action staff member and an experienced reader. At various stages in your writing process, we can give you access to dramaturgs, directors and actors to help you experience your play. We are here to serve you and your vision.
HERE’S THE LIST (selected from Dr. Lomas’s Happiness Found in Translation):
For additional information, please contact Gillian Drake at [email protected]
Short play virtual reading series
“Untranslatable words possess considerable power and potential. For a start, they allow us to give voice to sensations we’ve hazily experienced but previously lacked the ability to vocalize. In that way, they enable us to conceptualize familiar feelings, such as happiness, with greater clarity by helping us to sift these into finer-grained elements. More intriguingly, they may even introduce us to new phenomena that had previously been veiled to us and that we perhaps hadn’t suspected existed. Truly, such words can expand our horizons, and even usher us into new worlds.” – Tim Lomas PhD
2021 promises to be better than its predecessor; and we too at Spooky Action Theater want to experience brighter horizons. With New Works in Action’s Call for New Plays: Happy Beyond ...happy, we issue a challenge to our favorite playwrights to supply the words that we don’t have for complicated feelings we experience. As fodder for theatrical thinking, and inspired by Dr. Lomas’s Happiness Found in Translation, we’ve compiled a list of “happiness words” that do not directly translate into English.
Take this list as a prompt and send us an original short* play to be read/workshopped and possibly produced as part of Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action for 2021.
That’s your challenge; take one of these untranslatable words and define it in a play.
Selection Qualifications:
- Plays that push the boundaries of reality with stories too big to fit in a living-room. Imaginative plays telling a human story in a magical way: Magic Realism NOT Science Fiction.
- *Short: Because our readings/workshops of these plays will most likely be digital, we’ve found short works are better for video format. Please send us nothing longer than 45 pages or plays longer than an hour, with preference to works that runs 10 – 30 minutes. All plays selected for reading/workshop will be produced on Spooky Action’s YouTube channel (or, when conditions again permit, as an in-person play reading in our theater).
- Even though the prompts are non-English words, the etymology of the word should not be the influence for the play. There is no obligation to connect the inspiring word to a particular language, culture or ethnicity. The play you send should come from your experience of this “untranslatable feeling” that you want to share.
- Each of the words in the prompt defines a different kind of happiness – but that doesn’t mean you have to write or send a “happy” play. So often our understanding of happiness is defined by the tragedies of our personal experience. Comedies are welcome but not required.
- For your participation, you will receive a small stipend on par with the actors cast for the reading/workshop.
About the Program
New Works in Action (NWIA) aims to host a play development experience that is playwright-centered. All plays are read and evaluated by at least one Spooky Action staff member and an experienced reader. At various stages in your writing process, we can give you access to dramaturgs, directors and actors to help you experience your play. We are here to serve you and your vision.
HERE’S THE LIST (selected from Dr. Lomas’s Happiness Found in Translation):
- Charmolypi (Greek) – Sweet, joy-making sorrow. Sad, mourning joy. Happiness & sadness intermingled.
- Vidunder (Swedish) – An awe-inspiring miracle or monstrosity. A vision of the sublime. A liminal experience that challenges human boundaries.
- Compadre (Spanish) – Godfather or “co-father”. A term of respect bestowed on a close male friend. An ideal of companionship.
- Tuko Pamoja (Swahili) – Literally “one place,” “we are together.” Community togetherness. S hared purpose and motivation within a group.
- Wabi Sabi (Japanese) – Imperfect, weathered, rustic beauty. The aesthetics of impermanence and imperfections. Discerning depth and significance in phenomena.
- Li (Chinese) – Law, order, rational principle. The organic order found in nature. Patterns of symmetry, coherence and proportionality.
- Ella (Yup’ik) – Awareness and intelligence. Environment, world, cosmos. The pantheistic notion that life as a whole (and all elements within it) possesses consciousness or spirit.
- Ren (Egyptian) – A key constituent of the soul in ancient Egyptian religion and culture. A person’s unique name, possessing magical properties. Assures the person’s continued existence for as long as it is spoken.
- Aufheben (German) – Self-transcendence. To negate and yet preserve. The sublimation of the self, which is both negated (“seen through” and dismissed) and yet preserved (set within a larger experiential context).
- Frisson (French) – A spine-tingling shiver. A sensation of thrill, combining fear and excitement. The ambiguous pleasure of the “chills”.
- Etterpaklokskap (Norwegian) – “After wisdom” The knowledge you gain from making a mistake. Development through trial and error.
- Kintsugi (Japanese) – The art of repairing broken pottery using gold lacquer. Rendering an object’s fault lines beautiful and strong. Metaphorically, finding value, meaning and even beauty in our vulnerability and flaws.
- Magari (Italian) – The wistful hope of “if only”. Maybe, possibly. In one’s dreams.
- Hugfanggin (Icelandic) – Mind-captured. To be enchanted and enthralled by someone or something. Becoming transfixed, possibly involuntarily.
For additional information, please contact Gillian Drake at [email protected]
