The Concept of Authorship and Author Function in Theatre, Translation and Theatre Translation

In the article - starting from a conjecture about the elusiveness and, at the same time, obviousness of the concept of author, and emphasizing that a theatrical performance, created from the source material of a translated text, is an interdisciplinary event that can (and must) be analysed by means of at least two broad theoretical disciplines, namely from the perspective of theatre studies and translation studies - we shall collect basic conceptualizations of authorship from both disciplines. Theatrology, among other things, explores the author's function, which in the theatre has shifted or extended from the author of the text to the director and the author's group, which creates according to the collaborative principle. The concept of authorship is complex also in translations and translation studies, as every translation has at least two authors: the author of the original text and the author of the translated text. The search for the author and author function turns out to be particularly complex when we are talking about performances that are created on the basis of a translated text or even in dialogue with it. In the article, we juxtapose the established view of authorship as a linear chain (from the author of the text, translator, director or performing group together with actors) and the new conceptualisation of authorship in contemporary theatre as a rhizomatic structure. By discussing creativity, the complex structures of the author's function and author's actions, and the responsibility for meaning, the article integrates the discourse of the author function and replaces the pair loyalty/freedom with the notions of cooperation and negotiation of meaning.