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JUNE/JULY 2017 The Linguist 9
field and needing to stake our claim on the
material, figuring out an angle from which to
approach it.
TM: I think we've lost some reverence
towards the text: in our current process, we're
using the conversations we've had about this
translation, and about linguistic and cultural
difference, to make this text viable theatrically.
FP: So what is a 'foreignising' mise en scène?
AP: It's essentially a making strange – a
deliberate choice of Verfremdung.
TM: I think it mostly has to do with the
atmosphere you create: the creation of tone,
rhythms, cadences that reflect a text's
provenance from a different context, even if
it reaches us in translation.
FP: So more than about the words, it's about
the space between the words? Indeed, about
performance – i.e delivery, voice, gesture: the
colour words take on when they are spoken.
Yukiko Masui: As I watch the rehearsal, I am
mostly looking for something that comes from
the performers, but which I can use to add a
spice – a shape – to what's happening on
stage. In terms of movement, it's about
exploiting the fact that a performance has
much more language beyond just words.
FP: Laera's project was purposely timed to
coincide with the referendum on the UK's
membership of the EU, and always intended
to contribute to the debate on how UK
theatre culture deals with the presence of
the 'foreign' in its representational economy.
Of the three texts translated as part of
'Translation Adaptation Otherness' – Gliwice
Hamlet from Polish, Marie NDiaye's The
Snakes from French and Denise Despeyroux's
Ternura Negra from Spanish – Lachmann's
play was the one that was most radically cast.
The performers were very aware of themselves
as operators of a cultural short-circuit. Is this
still a central focus?
KH: Yes, but now I've had time to get more
interested in the writing, both in the original
and in translation. In translation, the text
always makes the audience aware of the fact
that, although we're telling this story in
English, this story isn't in English: strange
turns of phrase, odd word order, images that
don't immediately compute. But it's the
same in the original.
FP: Are you referring to the fact that the play
uses Polish and German, as well as the odd
sentence in English, Russian and Arabic?
KH: Exactly. When you're telling a story in a
language other than your native tongue
there's always that moment when you look
for a word and you can't find it, so you
decide to just say it in the first language that
comes to mind. In a sense, that's the most
foreign kind of storytelling: it's a common,
simple experience that tells you a lot about
someone's place in the world.
For more information about the
project, see www.translatingtheatre.com;
Twitter: @translatheatre.
LAYERS OF MEANING
Kudzi in the performance of Gliwice Hamlet
For writers' biographies for all feature
articles, see page 34.
