Letters from the ensemble
August 1, 2015
Embarking on our first two weeks of the experimental translation lab ensemble, all of us were in the same boat; committed, excited and curious but without having any sense as to where exactly we’re headed with this whole thing. Aluna had plotted out a packed itinerary that included ensemble building with Viewpoints exercises, experimenting with a short story by Julio Cortazar that ensemble member Carlos González-Vio is adapting into a play, workshopping my own previously produced play Leo set amidst Chile’s coup of 1973 – I directed while the actors played in both English and Spanish, often translating right on their feet – which proved to be one of our most cherished exercises as to translate on one’s feet one has to be able to see the images one is evoking with words and really paint the picture for the audience. And while they were on their feet working Trevor worked with simultaneous subtitling with an eye towards subtitles as elements of design to be implemented with beauty and storytelling in mind as opposed to just functional tools of translation.
Finally, we worked with Brendan Healy on a mad and beautiful little Cuban play by Rogelio Orizondo, a richly wild look at Cuban youth in the years following the revolution which, as I write this blog post from Havana, Cuba, is in some ways untranslatable because if you weren’t here, as I have never been before now, how would you really know? Which leads me to one of the most interesting discoveries of our experimentation so far; which is that we are not translating language we are translating culture and meaning. And that turns out to be a far more intricate expedition than just trading words to get more or less accurate descriptions and is exactly why this ensemble has come together. Too often we’ve seen productions or foreign films that are translated and yet the heart of the thing, its specific cultural life has been lost in translation. And so it seemed, as we came to the end of the first workshop, that it is those lost pieces we are hoping to find. Because we could feel, intuitively in our blood and bones, how different a play felt in Spanish then in English then in French (oh yeah, we have a French-Canadian in our ensemble too!)
With a stack of copious notes made by our resident translator Bruce Gibbons-Fell we are enlivened and inspired and looking forward to further play and creation and to make the journey from lost to found in translation
– Rosa Labordé
Aluna’s Interpretation Lab reconvenes at the beginning of September for another two week session.