Owen Martell - Ceisio'i Bywyd Hi

Why did you choose to write creatively as a career?

Well, I think there's probably a difference between writing and having a career as a writer, or a living. Personally speaking, I consider writing to be my work and if I have a career then I would measure it in terms of the work I produce and in terms of trying to produce good work. Making a living from writing is a completely different matter and I don't feel particularly qualified to talk about that. I chose to do what I do though, I suppose, because it's what I felt called to, in many ways. I do other things to earn a living, and I try to do so in a way which allows me the time to write. I'm happy enough with that for the moment. I don't know how, if at all, making money from writing would change the way, or what, I wrote.

What was your first paid writing assignment, and how did that opportunity arise?

My first commissioned work was Ceisio’i Bywyd Hi, a Welsh translation of Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life. Arwel Gruffydd, the director of the play, and Associate Director at Sherman Cymru, asked me to do the work, having, I assume, read books that I had previously published. I was paid for those books too but they weren't commissions, strictly speaking.

What was your initial reaction when you were asked to translate Attempts On Her Life?

I was very pleased that Arwel asked me and slightly worried at the same time. I wasn’t familiar with the play, and after reading it, I hesitated for a while. I wasn't sure I was right for it but, from the first reading, it was obvious that even attempting to translate it would be a thoroughly interesting and valuable experience.

What was the greatest challenge as you undertook the work?

There was quite a bit of head scratching over things like pitch and phraseology and the context of various scenes in the play. I suppose that the greatest challenge was trying to make sure that some of the scenes (which adopt a “familiar-yet-heightened” tone in English) didn’t drown, when translated, in a flow of Welsh terms which would be largely alien to the so-called “average speaker”.

Were you part of the rehearsal process? And if you were, how was your experience?

I was able to attend the first week of rehearsals and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully I didn’t obstruct the flow of the sessions too much. We spent some time discussing aspects of the text so that the actors could air certain problems or questions. Some discussions were textual, while others were more philosophical (so to speak). It was very interesting to witness how the individual actors reacted to the text – sometimes they tried to absorb the words and make them part of their own experience, at other times they seemed to try and keep the subject matter at a more abstract level to grapple with it in another, different space.

The greatest thrill was seeing how a text which had seemed decidedly literary to me in parts when I was translating it, could come alive through the voices and movements of the actors. Some scenes in particular, as far as I was concerned, had been written specifically in order to undermine ordinary notions of the dramatic; it was exciting, then, and tantalising too, to see those scenes becoming dramatic in their own ways.

What advice would you give to someone wishing to translate a play?

Over and above the obvious requirements, such as being fluent in both languages and a willingness to relate closely to the work, both textually and practically, I would say that the important thing is to believe in the text. It might not be a question of “loving” it, necessarily, but I think you need to be able to believe absolutely in the work and be as open as possible to what it can and might be.

Have you translated your own original work? And if so, did you remain true to the original, or were you tempted to make ‘improvements’?

I have translated some of my own work, and have taken advantage of the opportunity to add or remove words, lines or paragraphs or used the translation as a means of illuminating ideas in the original. In my experience, though, it's less useful to speak of it in terms of ‘original’ and 'translation’ in this context. Even though ideas are largely dependent on words and therefore on specific languages, I also think that it's a bit like travelling in Europe before the introduction of the Euro: in France you used francs to buy camembert, lira in Italy to buy gorgonzola, and pounds in Wales, more's the pity, to buy Caerphilly. Cheesy goodness transcends the tender used to pay for it, though.

How different is the experience of seeing your work on the stage to holding a book of yours which is hot off the press?

I will know the answer to that question at the end of this week.

Have you ever written an original play? If not, why?

No, I haven’t. I think the thrill of other forms has seemed more obvious to me in the past – and I suspect that those thrills will remain in some form for some years to come. Working on this production has been an eye opener, though. I had always imagined that writing for the stage was a more mysterious occupation, somehow, than writing a novel, for instance. Now I suspect that there are as many – or as few – ways of writing a play as there are of writing a novel.

Has the experience of working with Sherman Cymru on this production given you an appetite for the dramatic and theatrical form?

Most definitely. In what way I don’t know, but in the future...

If you were not an author, what other occupation would you/could you have chosen?

I would have liked to have been a musician – though that isn't an occupation in the “normal” sense of the word either. I think that I would have enjoyed being a typesetter, in the pre-digital age. Or a carpenter or framer. I enjoy framing things.