Translation opportunities and a showcase of Spanish playwrights

In October 2025, OOTW member Kate Eaton attended the Encuentro for writers and translators organised by the Asociación de Autoras y Autores de Teatro in Madrid and in November fellow OOTW member Rachel Toogood attended the Encuentro de Traducción at the Muestra International de Teatro in Alicante.

We both met a wonderful range of brilliant playwrights, all eager to be translated into English! Sadly we can’t translate them all, so we have written a blog to share details of the playwrights and their plays, with the aim of linking translators to writers they are interested in working with.

There is a currently a funding stream available to translators from the Fundación Sgae for theatre translations, with a deadline of May 29th (click here for more information).

If you are interested in being put in touch with one of the writers, please contact Kate on kteaton364@googlemail.com (if you are interested in one of the plays from the AAT encuentro) and Rachel on Rachel.l.toogood@gmail.com (if you are interested in connecting with one of the writers from the Muestra Internacional)

PLAYS FROM THE MUESTRA INTERNACIONAL DE ALICANTE (Contact Rachel Toogood)

Rachel Toodgood (top left) with playwrights and fellow translators at the 2025 Muestra de Dramaturgia de Alicante (photo (c) Muestra de Dramaturgia)

Adrián Perea https://www.contextoteatral.es/adrianperea.html

Los Chicos de Baker Miller (written with Álvaro Nogales)

Álvaro and Adrián were never particularly masculine. Their love for art, pastel colours, and celebrity gossip hasn’t exactly helped their virility manifest itself in any way. What hasn’t helped much either is their flamboyance, which has made it challenging for them to meet women. Because, as incredible as it may seem, Álvaro and Adrián like women. But that’s not how the rest of the world sees them—a world that can’t comprehend how two heterosexual men can be affectionate with each other, refer to one another in the feminine, and have painted nails. It’s a world they’ll have to confront as they reflect on their past and their masculinity.

This play tackles the theme of new masculinities through the personal stories of its creators, Álvaro Nogales and Adrián Perea—two young men who have long been challenging the word "masculinity" and everything it implies. What does it mean to be a man? Why am I not masculine enough? Should I be more manly, less feminine? These are the questions the protagonists will grapple with through their storyline and the various sketches that bring dynamism, humour, and, above all, critique. A critique of a society that still looks with disbelief at men who choose to set aside traditional manliness and behave however they please. Los Chicos de Baker-Miller is a journey through the small odyssey of these two modern-day Ulysses who are simply searching for the freedom to be themselves—painting their nails and reading celebrity gossip

Daniel J. Meyer (https://www.contextoteatral.es/danieljmeyer.html)

Abans (Antes)

Laia is 30 years old and lives on the streets. Marc is 25 and lives in Scotland. The death of their father a few years previously, puts the family's finances in turmoil, even more so when their mother loses her job shortly afterwards.

The lives of Laia and her younger brother Marc change drastically because of the need to bring money home: Laia drops out of school and takes whatever work she can find; Marc continues studying for a while but is forced to give up the scholarship he had been awarded. Their mother, unable to bear the situation any longer, decides to end her suffering. And once again, everything is thrown into turmoil…

Ernesto Is (https://www.contextoteatral.es/ernestois.html)

Memoria de la Nisal

Winner of the “Asturias Joven” Prize for Dramatic Texts in 2023. The piece recounts the reality of many children who, with the imminent fall of the Northern Front to the rebel army in the Spanish Civil War, were forced to flee Spain in 1937—first from Bilbao in June, and later from the Port of Musel in Gijón in September.

The play centres around four women from the same family – three alive and one dead – in their family home in northern Spain. The return of one the sisters after years of absence stirs their lives. The shattered ash tree in the family’s garden becomes a central character in this play about memory, both individual and collective, and the disasters that silence and false oblivion can cause in people and societies.

Esther F. Carrodeguas (https://www.contextoteatral.es/estherfcarrodeguas.html)

Lo único que verdaderamente quise toda la vida es ser delgada

A play written in musical movements that explores body image and the societal pressures surrounding body shape, examining how a person’s self-worth is distorted by cultural fatphobia, exposing the violence of a system that normalizes self-hatred. With raw honesty, this auto[Non]fictional text, addresses Carrodeguas’ relationship with her body, marked by the fatphobia that permeates every corner of our beauty-obsessed society. It explores the psychological and physical damage of body shape expectations, blending humour, irony and rage.

Gabriel Fuentes (https://www.contextoteatral.es/gabrielfuentes.html)

Las Pequeñas Alegrias

Sebastián, an introverted novelist in the midst of a creative and personal breakdown, is forced to return to the family home he left twenty years ago. This reunion reopens wounds that had long remained unspoken. This is the story of a man who stopped being a child far too soon, for whom survival itself is his greatest success. Sebastián has endured, and he needs to speak. He has the right to start over—and this time, he won’t do it alone.

A play that touches on childhood trauma and sexual abuse that family and institutions failed to acknowledge and believe.

Helena Tornero (https://www.contextoteatral.es/helenatornero.html)

Mujer y Aspiradora

This is a multi-layered play about climate change - a woman presents herself to the audience in a play that's part lecture and part direct marketing performance—seemingly to sell a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner. The characters - her sister, her nephew, her company director, Vincent Van Gogh, a Himalayan red panda, and a group of young climate activists, create various obstacles for her throughout the course of the play. They lead her to reconsider her past, present, and future life, her role in society in general, and specifically in relation to climate change and the future of the planet.

Irene Herráez (https://www.contextoteatral.es/ireneherraez.html)

Todas las vidas

A high school, a classroom, a suicide. Laughter and punches and spiders and songs and friendships and parks and sunflower seeds and antelopes with burning horns. Different lives. Voices that hold each other to live and to keep hope alive. A play created with and for teenagers.

Todas Las Vidas was born out of workshops with teenagers aged 12-18, led by Irene Herráez in the same school that she attended in Vallecas, Madrid. Much of the content of the play came from testimonials from the kids themselves and some of it was inspired by them.

It was the winner of the Premio Calderón de la Barca 2024.

“The impact is the feeling. (…) As Herráez’s play moves from one life to another, from one death to another, something begins to stir in the body. In the senses. That impact returns before such clear, such theatrical writing. What a joy when someone writes for the stage leaving only what is essential. Each text, the tip of an iceberg of an entire life. A sharp condensation that touches you —and leaves a mark.” (Pablo Messiez)

Josi Alvarado (https://www.contextoteatral.es/josialvarado.html)

Adelas y Bernadas 

A contemporary theatrical re-reading of Federico García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba, reframed from a feminist, critical, and often irreverent perspective.

Instead of centering the authoritarian presence of Bernarda, the play foregrounds the Adelas and the Bernardas—doubling and multiplying these figures to explore how cycles of repression, desire, and rebellion repeat across generations.

With a strong feminist voice, the play explores the relationship between mothers and daughters, whilst dismantling the patriarchal dynamic of Lorca’s text by redistributing narrative focus and power.

Juli Disla (https://www.contextoteatral.es/julidisla.html)

La Suerte 

Jaime and Julián love each other. Julián proposes to Jaime that they become parents. Jaime sensibly considers things slowly. Juli pressures him a little. Jaime suggests attending some informational sessions at the Adoption Centre; initially, they don't commit to anything. They sign up, have doubts, regrets, are afraid, are eager, believe they are capable, don't believe they are capable, get married, and tell their families. Their love grows, and everything makes more sense. What will their child's life be like in a society that consumes heteronormative family models, even in cartoons?

Tomás Cabané (https://www.contextoteatral.es/tomascabane.html)

Los días estériles

Ava, a film director, prepares her new movie in the midst of insomnia, a crisis, and her own perfectionism. In a world driven by the urgency to produce, she questions what it means to tell stories from a position of privilege and what happens to the saturation of images that fade as quickly as dreams. It is an ode to bearing no fruit, a passage between wakefulness and sleep, between the desire to create and the need to pause.

AUTHORS AND PLAYS FROM THE AAT ENCUENTROS IN MADRID (Contact Kate Eaton)

Kate Eaton (seated centre, below screen) with playwrights and fellow translators at the 2025 SILT (photo (c) AAT)

Noé Vicente (https://editorialsoldesol.com/autor/noe-vicente/)

El Pollito

A monologue based on the testimonies of Jesús Ruiz Garcia, a young gay Spaniard who was imprisoned for drug trafficking in Peru. It is a story of survival, of the anti-hero as hero, and of a victim who refuses to be victimised.

Ángel Velasco (https://www.contextoteatral.es/obras.html)

PEAChAIR

A play of 50 characters (played by 4 actors) that takes a dizzying tour through time and space to confront the reality of AI head on…!!!

Antonio Sansano Escudero (https://aat.es/buscautores/author/jase/)

Catorce mil palabras…

A play that looks at the gap between appearance and reality in the lives of a devoted couple who appear have sacrificed everything to the public good…

Victoria Enguídanos (https://www.contextoteatral.es/victoriaenguidanos.html)

No se lo digas a nadie

A powerful dramatic text for one actress that looks at the life-long consequences for adult survivors of sexual abuse in childhood and why they are often unable to talk about what has happened to them. Further information about the text and its impact in Spain here.

Cristina Simón Alcaine (https://aat.es/buscautores/en/author/csa/)

El hijo ardió

In a clearing in a wood opposite a tree we find Lu, a boy who is filled with a strong desire to gestate and engender life inside his own body. This urge which goes against his own biology will lead him to look for answers, encouraged by his sister, within a kind of oracle. In the tree house where he finds this oracle, there will be a change in the nature of his desire, and he will find his way back to his roots and all the women that came before him.

Xavier Morató Garcia (https://www.contextoteatral.es/xavimorato.html)

Ni en broma

Jana an aspiring mayoral candidate (female) from a progressive political party and Humber a racist, sexist, homophobic stand-up comedian (male) whose act has just been cancelled find themselves thrown together in unlikely circumstances with 24 hours to create a comic monologue that must be funny but above all must offend nobody. Somewhere between a comedy and a drama the play asks where the limits of humour lie, whilst at the same time playing with those limits.

(Xavi also has a new play Karma – a tragi-comedy about souls in purgatory for which he is also looking for a translator)

Alfonso Plou Escolá (https://aat.es/buscautores/en/author/ap/)

Los hermanos Machado

Few literary families exemplify the rift caused by the Spanish Civil War more than the Machado family. For three years, the brothers, who were on opposing sides, refused to criticize each other but neither did they speak. By the time Manuel wanted to meet up with Antonio, conversation was no longer possible. This play allows the brothers to have the meeting that never took place and imagines what might have happened when they met.

Enrique Torres Infantes (https://aat.es/buscautores/author/eti/)

Espacios infinitos

A man who can only conquer his insomnia and find calm by sleeping in a wardrobe. A wardrobe in a room in the flat where he used to live when he was a boy. The flat now belongs to his neighbour, a mysterious woman who never goes outside. Persuading her to let him sleep there hasn’t been easy. But now they have come to an agreement that may have life-changing consequences for both of them.  A charming, funny play about the infinite spaces we all inhabit.

Roberto García de Mesa (https://academiadelasartesescenicas.es/roberto-garcia-de-mesa/)

La edad del frío. Conversaciones con Antígona

A woman travels through different spaces of consciousness and confronts the ghosts of the society in which she lives. A scenic poem, a piece of total theatre that ruminates on European utopias and anti-utopias, life and death, appearances and reality and the damage created by political and religious fundamentalism and gender violence.

Beatriz Velilla (https://www.contextoteatral.es/beatrizvelilla.html)

Se busca

A play set around a radio programme that tries to reunite callers with items they have lost. It is also a play about adoption, stolen childhoods and stolen children. It has a light, comic touch whilst also dealing with dark themes.

Thank you and happy translating!

Kate Eaton and Rachel Toogood