A translator tries her luck at a theatre group
Like a fish out of water
A translator tries her luck at a theatre group
by Dina Tyrovola
“In the beginning was the Word”. Let’s say that due to my personality/skills on the one hand, and my occupation on the other, I’m good with words, meaning that I like reading, I pay attention to syntax, expression and meaning, and for me, learning a text by heart is a piece of cake and a thoroughly enjoyable task. I understand what needs to be accented, how to address people, etc. etc. But, am I capable of speaking and moving at the same time? Not moving in a random way, but for a reason, with reason, in direct link with what I’m saying. And, last but not least, am I capable of inventing images, movements, my body’s relationship to other bodies, i.e. of linking speech and body and my body with other bodies? Houston, we’ve got a problem!
When your theatre group works with improvisation and self-directed acting, everything relies on the individual and the team. Our director offered us the following guidelines: do not describe; do not mime; do not think; do not censor yourselves; act based on what’s happening now; go with the team’s flow; keep your eyes and ears open; do not pretend to do something, do it; act in a technical way, changing the level of your movement, the speed and the qualities of your body and expressions; do not act, be the person/thing. Could it be any harder? I don’t think so.
In my case, everything starts in my mind, I need to think about what I’m doing now, what I’m going to do next, I feel incapable of inventing images and movements, all I can do is work with speech. A real challenge then! What did I do? Since I had no previous experience or training, I worked a lot, then worked some more, I observed, I followed the guidelines, I read a lot, I embraced the text and all its meanings. It took me some time to realise what’s going on and that when you approach something in your own way, it will open up to you. I read and collaborated, I trusted the others, I tried many things and failed many times, I sweated a lot and enjoyed it all the same.
This also got me thinking about intersemiotic translation and translation in general. One of our courses at the University had to do with intersemiotic translation, i.e. the translation of a sign into another system of signs. It deals with the following question: Is it possible to translate a literary text into a movie, a poem into a sculpture, a painting into dancing or vice versa?[1]. Well, I felt that I was asked to do something similar, to translate speech into movement, into theatre, something very interesting and challenging too, something that –I can be pretty sure now- is absolutely possible. Of course, words are an integral part of theatre, but its method is based on the idea of reading a text and then taking it to the stage. What is more, some of the intermediate steps will sound very familiar to translators: reading and understanding the text, linking meanings throughout the play (cf. text), researching facts and information, the genre, the specific play (cf. text), the period when the story is taking place, the background in general, and its relation to the present, the writer, the characters (cf. literary translation), interpreting the notions, the writer’s intentions, making it easy for the audience to understand, shaping the roles (cf. characters in literature), completing each part separately and the whole, working on the transitions between parts. And what about the role of the rhythm, of the speech, of the movement and of breathing in this context?
Well, that’s all I wanted to say and let me add a funny note to this post: of the various small roles I had to play, the hardest one for me was to play the woman (an American Indian one)! Finally, I’m also very proud to have written the introduction to our play, inspired by our common efforts and another source of satisfaction for a language freak. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my friends in the theatre group and our director-animateur Dina Kafterani for their invaluable help (patience, encouragement, and much more). In the future, I may try injecting more movement, sounds, senses and other extratextual elements into my translations…
P.S. The play was “Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas” by Dario Fo and it was performed (part of it, the entire play is coming soon) by the Theatre Group of the Cultural Association of Xirokambi, Laconia.