Datebook: I had a feeling there would be jokes and references I wouldn’t get at Tagalog 2019, Bindlestiff Studio’s festival of one-act plays performed in Tagalog, which I don’t speak. The Filipino American performing arts company, now celebrating its 30th year, planned to project English supertitles during the show, but I was anticipating that some concepts would defy translation, and that my brain might not always be able to toggle quickly enough between reading text and watching performance.
5 comments:
As someone who doesn’t really speak any language besides Hebrew in temple, I am very intrigued by what the article had to say. I love how brutally honest the author was about her mistakes when seeing a Filipino-American show performed in Tagalog. I can definitely understand when she talks about missing a whole plot point that would seem a pretty obvious point but how she still got things from the show. I feel this every time I see in opera here at the school of drama that isn’t in English and I talk about the show with the friends that I’ve seen the show with. I loved how the author talked about it being okay not knowing what is going and creating your own theatre experience. I feel like theatrical people are always talking about creating an individualized experience for an audience member and this article points out how if the whole audience didn’t know the language that the show was being spoken in, that would create a different journey from everyone. I think one barrier though is that people don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that they don’t fully understand, so I agree with the author’s claim that one should see theatre in unknown languages but I don’t know if it is something people should do a lot.
This is an interesting article. I think it would be great to see more theatre that is in a language not native to my own tongue. Like the article said, makes you acknowledge that there are other forms of theatre and other ways to tell stories. One of the most interesting pieces I had ever seen was in my undergrad. We saw a kabuki play that was entirely in Japanese. I do not think I ever will have another experience like that unless I travel out of the country. I also was given the opportunity in undergrad to tour around in a clown troupe where we would perform in underprivileged communities in Spanish and English to bring as many people as we could and to give everyone an opportunity to see and hear a story told differently. I also love that the article ends with saying that just because you do not understand the language, it does not mean you are ignorant; it encourages you to think of it as a gift.
I agree that you should see theatre in a different language at least once in your life. It sounds pointless because you either won't understand anything, or you will miss the action trying to read what's going on in the dialogue, but it is not like that. There's something about the experiences that draws you in, and even though you don't understand everything that is happening or why it is happening, you can still grasp enough to enjoy it. I live in Miami and if you are familiar with Miami, you know that it is very spanish. I light board operated for a show in spanish called "La Nona," (Grandma). It was in a blackbox and the area for the light board was off in a corner behind the curtains, so even though I had a peephole where I could see the action, I couldn't see the supertitles at all. I asked for a summary of the show before hand so that I could know what was happening. That definitely helped. I was able to follow along through the action and expressions, and I really enjoyed the show. It wasn't hard to keep up and get a general idea of what the character were doing nor saying. Obviously I didn't fully understand but I could follow enough to enjoy it. It helped that it was a comedy and it was in a realistic box set. I'm sure seeing a very conceptualized Shakespeare piece in a different language would be really hard to follow. So my advice would be to see a comedy or a farce first. Something with lots of action that you can follow and strong characters with very clear story lines.
I think theatre in a different language can be an incredible way to experience another culture. We like to think in many of our productions that we are offering our audiences a window into some human experience. For culturally different productions, there really isn't a better way to experience this. We can forget in our very western way of thinking that theatre should be done a certain way, but that shuts out the "the countless other theatrical cultures and structures that are out there". The most obvious form of theatre in another language, as Alexander points out above, is often Opera. Often, people do a fair amount of research in preparation to see an opera about the plot and history so they are less distracted by keeping up with subtitles, and I think we can adopt this for these productions where language is seen as a barrier. When you break away from the logistics of language and remind yourself that these are human experiences being portrayed on the stage, you will get so much more out of a production.
This article makes a really compelling argument for going to see theatre in a language that you don’t understand and makes me think about what the experience would be like and I think it would be very introspective. I am very aware of the deficiency that I have when it comes to speaking other languages and I think that my own deficiency and insecurity about that deficiency shouldn’t restrain me from going and seeing meaningful works that I can’t understand the language of. I think in general when we go to a performance or watch a movie we get very invested in the idea of “getting it” and that can take away from our overall experience. I had a friend who I didn’t like watching movies with because he was constantly trying to figure out the movie while we were watching it he had to have the answer to the twist before it was revealed and I just wanted to watch the movie. I think this sort of needing to be clued in is why many of us don’t watch or listen to things in languages we don’t understand but I think there is a certain beauty and appreciation in the not knowing.
Post a Comment