OVER ONS ✏ ABOUT US
We, Orihana Calcines and Ryan van der Heijden, are a translating, editing, and writing team based in the Netherlands. Together, we have translated the Broadway musicals, Waitress, for the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts, and Mean Girls for Elindo Avastia's Musical Online. We are currently working on new song lyrics, musical projects, and scripts, and are always open to new translation assignments.
Orihana was born in Venezuela and raised trilingually, so translating in Spanish, English, and Dutch started very early on in her life. A love for music, language, and the theater was always strongly present. Her first musical theatre translation was Dear Evan Hansen with Mikel van Dijk, featured on the album Het Jij Komt Terecht Project. She lived in New York in 2019, where she trained as a lyricist with Marcy Heisler, and attended workshops with the Broadway Teaching Group, The Juilliard School, Natalie Weiss, and Playwrights Horizons. She attended the M-Lab Masterclasses in Amsterdam led by Koen van Dijk, with lessons from Paul de Munnik and Dick van den Heuvel. She works as a lyricist, songwriter, and translator, while also writing her own musicals.
Ryan has been spending time in theaters since childhood and brings this experience to work as a translator and adapter. A passion for musical storytelling and a keen eye for detail resulted in successful translations of Waitress (2020) and Mean Girls (2021). Ryan participated in the Pasek & Paul: Songwriting for Musical Theatre course with Orihana, took classes at Toronto Songwriting School and attended seminars by Stephen Schwartz and Jason Robert Brown. Ryan is also active as a singer and actor in musical productions and (short) films. He is also involved in video and music projects as an executive producer.
We started at the same youth theater school when we were eight years old. Since then, we have worked on dozens of projects together. As a team, we pay attention to the big picture and the smallest details, we recognize the origin of a lyric and where it needs to go, and we share a common goal: to tell the story as best we can in Dutch, always acknowledging and respecting the original work.
WAT WIJ DOEN ✏ WHAT WE DO
The original book and sheet music are “sacred”, an inside joke we always come back to. Syllables, melodic accents, and rhythm are the foundation upon which we carefully build.
We have four rules for every translation:
① WELL RHYMED IS HALF DONE
Song lyrics consist of internal, slant and/or perfect rhyme, alliteration, and metaphors. Our goal is to keep all ideas intact and write lyrics that feel as strong as all of the original material.
② I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?
Each character in a musical has their own personality, background, and language. It is very important to us that each character maintains their own voice in our lyrics.
③ FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Humor and references are often a challenge to translate. It is our job to make the localization of the joke or (name) reference work for a Dutch audience, while preserving the intent of the writers.
④ SING OUT, LOUISE!
Lyrics are where we encounter the factor of sound and diction. This step is extremely important for the intelligibility of the words and the performability of the actors. All lyrics are tested by us before they are performed. We flexibly deal with actors' requests.
WERK ✏ WORK
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WAITRESS
We wrote the translation and adaptation of the Broadway musical Waitress for the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts. This Broadway musical was written by Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson. This version was directed by Marleen van der Loo, musically accompanied by Michiel Ballhaus, and produced by Mara Kers for her Master of Music graduation production.
Even though we have never touched a cake recipe ourselves, we really enjoyed all the research about butter, sugar, and flour in order to serve the Dutch names of Jenna's cakes.
CAST: Mara Kers, Dirk van den Brand, Meren Verhaegh, Michelle Nijenhuis, Zjon Smaal and Joost van der Aa -
MEAN GIRLS
The humorous and contemporary musical Mean Girls, written by Jeff Richmond, Nell Benjamin, and Tina Fey, was translated for Elindo Avastia's third Musical Online concert, which ran from May 1st to May 5th, 2021.
Calculating all of the math jokes and walking around the cafeteria in proverbial pink heels was pretty fetch!
CAST: Nienke Latten, April Darby, Esmée Dekker, Helle Vanderheyden, Dave Rijnders, Janis van Dorsselaer, Michiel de Meyer and Elindo Avastia -
DATING FOR GEEKS – THE MUSICAL
Dating for Geeks is a popular panel cartoon about six nerds, a dating consultant, and their (lack of a) love life, created and drawn by Kenny Rubenis. The comic appeared in daily newspapers Metro and Sp!ts between 2014 and 2019 and has continued as a successful webcomic and comic book series.
Our job is to adapt this series of comics into a comedic story full of relatable moments, with musical nods to movies and games. We are currently in the preliminary writing phase of the project.
CONTACT
Do you have any questions? We’d love to hear from you!
Fill in our contact form or send us an email at contact@calcinesvanderheijden.nl
