User:May Brit Fossan/sandbox

CURRICULUM VITA

Dr May-Brit Akerholt

May-Brit Akerholt was born and educated in Norway before she came to live in Australia. She has worked as a Tutor in English and Drama at Macquarie University (Sydney) and Lecturer in Drama and Dramaturg at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). She spent six years as Dramaturg and Literary Manager at Sydney Theatre Company before she became the Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre, and the annual National Playwrights' Conference. During her 10 years as AD, she worked extensively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers, actors and directors, as well as theatre artists from around the country.

May-Brit has translated / adapted more than 20 plays, mainly by Ibsen, some by Strindberg and Jon Fosse, which have been produced by major theatre companies around the country, including Sydney Theatre Company, Company B Belvoir, State Theatre Company of SA, Queensland Theatre Company, East Coast Theatre Company. She worked as dramaturg and researcher on most of the productions of her own translations and adaptations, as well as dramaturg on Australian plays.

May-Brit has written a book about Patrick White’s drama (Patrick White, Rodopi, Amsterdam). Two volumes of translations of Ibsen and Strindberg plays have been published by Word for Word, Five Islands Press, Sydney; four volumes of plays by Jon Fosse by Oberon Books, London. Her translations of Fosse’s Essays and his novel Trilogy have been published by Dalkey Archives Press, UK and US, and her translations of his novel The Boathouse is due for publication in October 2017. Numerous articles about translation, theatre and writing for performance have appeared in books and journals, including “New Stages: Contemporary Theatre” in Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature, Cambridge, 2000; “’A Glorious, Terrible Life: The Dual Image in Patrick White’s Dramatic Language”, Patrick White Centenary. The Legacy of a Prodigal Son, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015; “The revolution of the human spirit, or ‘there must be trolls in what I write” in Adapting Translation for the Stage, Routledge, London and New York, 2017.

May-Brit is an occasional guest lecturer at Department of Theatre and Performance, University of Sydney, and AIMD, Australian Institute of Music and Drama, Sydney. May-Brit is a recipient of a Fellowship from the Theatre Board of Australia Council, and a scholarship from The University of Sydney.

She has served as a Director of Company B, Belvoir St. Theatre, and Director of World Interplay.