Ella Wildridge – Translator, dramaturg
Born December 27 1945: died August 26, 2025
Ella Wildridge, who has died aged 79, was one of Scottish theatre’s great unsung heroines. As a translator and dramaturg fluent in German and French, and who read in Russian, Italian, Spanish, and later Farsi, Wildridge brought a sense of internationalism to the Scottish stage that included translations of writers from Germany, Quebec and France. Working alongside her partner, playwright Tom McGrath, and then at the Traverse Theatre, Wildridge also helped foster a new generation of Scottish playwrights throughout the 1990s and beyond.
Ella Muriel Wildridge was born at Clover Hill Farm in Broughton, Peeblesshire, the youngest of four sisters to Gilbert Johnson Wildridge and Constance Lila Wildridge (née Hooper). Her father was a Cambridge graduate and farmer who encouraged his daughters’ intellectual pursuits. Her mother studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and performed with a troupe of travelling players who once entertained George Bernard Shaw.
Both Wildridge’s parents put creativity, intellect and curiosity at the centre of family life. It was under these influences that Wildridge’s own free spirited thirst for knowledge flourished. When she was one, the family relocated to Switzerland so her father could receive treatment for tuberculosis. After three years they returned to Scotland, settling in Edinburgh with Wildridge’s paternal grandmother, after whom she was named.
Wildridge went to Rothesay House School, and then Queen Margaret’s Anglican School for Girls. Aged eighteen, she was diagnosed with cancer, and was not expected to survive. She nevertheless made a full recovery while in hospital in London.
Wildridge studied German at the University of Edinburgh, continuing as a post-graduate in Germany, where she studied German literature and language. After spending a year working in a bookshop in New Zealand, where two of her sisters had emigrated, Wildridge worked as a private tutor in Fife, and built a career as a translator.
In the late 1980s, Wildridge met playwright Tom McGrath at a conference. It was to change both of their lives, with Wildridge fusing her love of languages with deep engagement with literature and the arts. McGrath’s intellectual inquisitiveness matched her own, and they began working together, with Wildridge becoming his assistant during his tenure as Associate Literary Director (Scotland). Based at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Wildridge and McGrath worked as a team developing playwrights, and helped lay the groundwork for Playwrights Studio Scotland. They also became personal as well as professional partners.
One of Wildridge’s major achievements was a translation of Merlin, an epic play by German writer Tankred Dorst. With Wildridge making a literal translation, McGrath took this as source material for a suitably sprawling interpretation that was spread over two parts. This had developed out of The Deviant Tradition, a week of rehearsed readings that took place at the Lyceum in 1990, and was based around the work of Dorst and Heiner Mülleralongside that of Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the year before still fresh, having work by writers from either side of the former divide (Dorst from the West, Müllerfrom the East) on the same programme was of huge significance.
In 1992, Wildridge moved around the corner from the Lyceum’s Grindlay Street home to the Traverse Theatre’s new purpose built premises on Cambridge Street to become Scotland’s new writing theatre’s first ever dramaturg – a term for literary advisor dating back to eighteenth century Germany. Over the next six years, Wildridge worked alongside directors Ian Brown, Philip Howard, John Tiffany and others during a crucial period in the theatre’s history, with now major writers including David Greig, Nicola McCartney, David Harrower, Henry Adam, Stephen Greenhorn and Douglas Maxwell all producing early works there.
Wildridge also worked with McGrath on a translation of Stones and Ashes (1995), by Quebecois writer Daniel Danis. As with Merlin, Wildridge did a literal translation, which McGrath adapted.
A major project initiated by Wildridge in 1998 with the Traverse’s then Literary Director John Tiffany was Colours of the Chameleon (1998). Developed from a series of rehearsed readings of plays by international writers under the banner of Windows on the World, the event brought together twenty-one emerging writers from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland. Over three weeks the writers developed short plays with directors and a group of actors, with the project culminating with three nights of rehearsed readings. It was a time of looking outwards to the world, and with the Balkan wars redrawing borders, a series of works with big ideas came to the fore.
Nicholas Bone of Magnetic North theatre company worked on the project with fellow directors Tiffany and Yvonne McDevitt, and remembers how “At the end of each day, Ella would sit in the Traverse bar listening to what had gone on during the day, asking questions, and generally basking in the glow of this amazing, slightly anarchic thing she had made happen.
“She worked very had to raise the money to do it,’ Bone remembers, “and it represented so much of what she believed in – rigorous dramaturgy, internationalism, plays that engaged with what was going on in the world, and the power of bringing people together to talk.”
After leaving the Traverse in 1999, Wildridge worked as a freelance translator, with several rehearsed readings of plays she had worked on performed at the Traverse. From Germany, there was King Kong’s Daughters (2000) by Theresia Walser; from Quebec, Tongue to Tongue, The Dogs of the Rock (2002) – another play by Danis; and, from France, Infiltrators (2004) by Jose Pliya. There were contributions as well to the National Theatre’s Connections young people’s theatre initiative. These included Don’t Eat Little Charlie (2001), by Dorst and Ursula Ehler; and Perpetrators (2001), by Thomas Jonigk. Wildridge also translated Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play, Spring Awakening, adapted by Douglas Maxwell for Grid Iron Theatre’s production in 2010.
For twenty years, Wildridge and McGrath lived in Kingskettle, Fife, until McGrath’s death in 2009. During their time together, their home in Ash Villa became a haven for artists, with creativity and conversation in abundance.
Following McGrath’s passing in 2009, Wildridge helped establish the Tom McGrath Trust, which supported playwrights and translators in Scotland. From 2011 to 2020, the Trust awarded over £40,000 to eighty artists, seeding new writing and creative exploration. The Trust’s final round of grants included a special Wild Award in recognition of Wildridge’s major contribution to Scotland’s creative community. It was a fitting tribute to a rare and unique talent who brought the world to Scottish theatre, and helped take it back out there in return.
She is survived by her sisters Mary, Clare, and Biddy; Tom’s daughters Julie, Sonia, and Alice; and grandchildren Cormac, Anina, Aren, Eilidh, and Niamh.
The Herald, September 20th 2025
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