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Barbara Bray

BARBARA BRAY

  (1924 - 2010)

Nationality:    English
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Barbara Bray (nee Jacobs; 24 November 1924 in Paddington, London - 25 February 2010) was an English translator and critic. An identical twin (her sister Olive Classe is also a translator), she was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read English, with papers in French and Italian. Bray became a script editor in 1953 for the BBC Third Programme, commissioning and translating European twentieth-century avant-garde writing for the network. Harold Pinter wrote some of his earliest work at Bray's insistence, but her connection with Samuel Beckett became personal as well as professional. From about 1961, Bray lived in Paris and established a career as a translator and critic. She translated the correspondence of Gustave Flaubert, and work by leading French speaking writers of her own time including Marguerite Duras, Amin Maalouf, Julia Kristeva, Michel Quint, Jean Anouilh, Michel Tournier, Jean Genet, Alain Bosquet, Rejean Ducharme and Philippe Sollers. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1986. Bray collaborated with the film director Joseph Losey on the screenplay for Galileo (1975), which was an adaptation of the play by Bertolt Brecht. During the same decade, they collaborated on the script for a biographical film about Ibn Sa'ud, the founder of Saudi Arabia and (with Harold Pinter), she wrote an adaptation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Her relationship with the married Beckett continued for the rest of his life, and Bray was one of the few people with whom the Irishman discussed his work. She suffered a stroke at the end of 2003. In late 2009, she moved to a nursing home in Edinburgh near the residence of one of her daughters. In spite of her serious disability she worked until shortly before her death on her memoir of Samuel Beckett, Let Mortals Rejoice. . ., which she was unable to complete. Her reflections on Samuel Beckett, both as a writer and as a person, became part of a series of conversations with her Polish friend Marek Kedzierski, recorded from 2004 to 2009. Extensive excerpts from these conversations were published in German by Berlinīs quarterly Lettre international (Es war wie ein Blitz&vol. 87, Winter 2009) and in French by the magazine Europe (Cīetait comme un eclair, un eclair aveuglant, no. 974/975 Juin-Juillet 2010), as well as in Polish, Slovak and Swedish. The English original of these excerpts remains unpublished, but other fragments have appeared in Modernism/modernity (Barbara Bray: In Her Own Words, Volume 18, Number 4, November 2011). - wiki

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below is a list of Barbara Bray's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

        About Mortin         Antigone         Architruc         Clope         Dead Letter         Dictation         Eden Cinema         Hypothesis, The         India Song         La Musica         L'Amante Anglaise         Lovers Of Viorne, The         Savannah Bay         Suzanna Andler         Thursday's Ladies         Viaducts Of Seine-et-Oise, The



About Mortin

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Plays Volume Two" published by Calder and Boyars 1967   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Antigone

Antigone
antigone was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was occupied and part of Hitler's europe. the play depicts an authoritarian regime and the play's characters mirrored the predicament of the French people of the time. Based on Sophocles' ancient Greek tragedy, antigone, which was first performed in athens in the 5th century BC, its theme was nevertheless topical. For in antigone's faithfulness to her dead brother and his proper burial and her reiterated "No!" to the dictator Creon, the French audience saw its own resistance to the German occupation. the Germans allowed the play to be performed presumably because they found Creon's arguments for dictatorship so convincing. the play is regularly performed and studied around the world.

Notes:
Original Playwright - Jean Anouilh

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen, London   978-0413695406

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  8            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Architruc

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Plays Volume Two" published by Calder and Boyars 1967   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Clope

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
London    1967

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Plays Volume One" published by Calder and Boyars 1963   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Dead Letter

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Plays Volume One" published by Calder and Boyars 1963   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Dictation

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "A Bizarre Will and Other Plays" published by Red Dust 1989   978-0873760652

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Eden Cinema

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:
Offstage Down, London    1991

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in "Margurite Duras four plays" Oberon Books, London, 1992   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Hypothesis, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Robert Pinget

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Plays Volume Two" published by Calder and Boyars 1967   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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India Song

Synopsis:
India 1930s. the wife of the French Ambassador gets bored and embarks on a string of affairs. Her husband turns a blind eye

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in "Margurite Duras four plays" Oberon Books, London, 1992   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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La Musica

Synopsis:
A couple meet some years after their divorce to divide up some furniture they had in storage. they talk over their life together and wonder how they never murdered each other

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Penguin, London, 1966   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
One act

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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L'Amante Anglaise

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Oberon Books, London, 1997   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Lovers Of Viorne, The

Synopsis:
A woman murders her deaf-mute cousin, cuts up her body and drops the parts on to freight trains going to different parts of France

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Translation

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Savannah Bay

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in "Margurite Duras four plays" Oberon Books, London, 1992   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Suzanna Andler

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Oberon Books, London, 1997   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Thursday's Ladies

Synopsis:
Past and present overlap in the individual lives of three sixty year old Parisian ladies meeting for their ritual tea time chats

Notes:
Original Playwright - Loleh Bellon

1st Produced:
Apollo Theatre, London    1987

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Samuel French, London, 1980   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  3            Other:  voices

Further Reference:
-

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Viaducts Of Seine-et-Oise, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
Original Playwright - Marguerite Duras

1st Produced:
Unproduced    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Calder & Boyers, London, 1967   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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