The Cockpit and UAL Wimbledon
Global Voices & Panlingual Dramaturgies
17 Nov 2026
PERFORMANCE DETAILS
Join professional theatre-makers, dramaturgs, translators, publishers and researchers for a panel talk to examine the interrelation between (un)translatability, (un)stageability and (un)performability.
We will reflect on these topics in the context of Voila! Theatre festival championing work by artists working across multiple languages, at a time when the UK theatre landscape is increasingly taking note of transnational artists and audiences.
We will address panlingualism in the theatre, alongside the experience of making work in languages other than English and/or the creatives’ own mother tongue. We shall be reflecting on what it means to be an exophonic artist, and on how migration challenges the notion of the ‘native speaker’. The event will include a short reading from a contemporary play, with a view to serve as a prompt for an applied conversation on the topic.
Moderator: Dr Jozefina Komporaly (UAL Wimbledon College of Arts, academic and translator)
Ticket purchase by donation. Donations for tickets will go to Voila Theatre Festival, in order to keep celebrating migrant artists in the UK making work in their own language and accents.
Cast & Creatives
Moderator: Dr. Jozefina Komporaly (UAL, academic and translator)
Panelists: Dr. Almiro Andrade, Inna Cebotari, Yifan Wu
Dr. Jozefina Komporaly
Jozefina Komporaly is Reader in Performance & Dramaturgy at the University of the Arts London and aliterary translator from Hungarian and Romanian into English. Her work is embedded into an agenda of cultural advocacy, championing under-represented voices and communities. She is editor and co-translator of the drama collections How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (Seagull, 2015); András Visky's Barrack Dramaturgy (Intellect, 2017) and Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion (Bloomsbury, 2021), and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre, including the monograph Radical Revival as Adaptation for Palgrave and a forthcoming volume on transnational theatre for Bloomsbury. Her stage translations have been produced internationally. She is a member of the UK Translators Association. Website: https://jozefinakomporaly.com/
Inna Cebotari
Inna Cebotari is an award-winning Moldovan-Romanian playwright, screenwriter, director and performer based in London, and Artistic Director of Kinth Square. Her practice explores belonging, identity and human connection through text, movement, sound and visual storytelling. Her plays have been translated into German, Russian and English. She holds master’s degrees in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in Chișinău, in Playwriting and Creative Writing from the University of Arts in Târgu Mureș, and in Theatre Directing from the Moscow Art Theatre School.
Yifan Wu
Yifan Wu is a London-based translator, writer and dramaturg, and co-founder of Wordtide Theatre. Their theatre translation
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