Translations by Brian Friel
CAST LIST
MANUS Brad Larson
SARAH Eleanor Svaton
JIMMY JACK Tommy Barron
MAIRE Rikki Jo Hickey
DOALTY Geoff Bangs
BRIDGET Jenn Thomas
HUGH Craig Howes
OWEN Danny Randerson
CAPTAIN LANCEY Adrian Fiala-Clark
Lt. YOLLAND Nathan Garrett
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Translated signs
I had a wonderful meeting yesterday with Jan Fried of KCC and her friend Missy Keast who is a storyteller and has done lots of work with deaf theatre productions. We are moving forward with a plan to have all 5 performances of "Translations" interpreted into American Sign Language. Lots to figure out, grant money to apply for, seating configuration to settle on, etc, but very encouraging to hear their ideas and enthusiasm for the project. And it was fascinating to watch Jan translating my words to Missy from spoken English to ASL, and telling me in English how Missy was replying. It was a thematic enactment of the play!
Jan sees parallels in the play to the historical suppression of deaf culture and language. She also had some great comments about how Hawai'i has a different local ASL dialect, which she tries to preserve in her own signing so that it will not die out.
Jan sees parallels in the play to the historical suppression of deaf culture and language. She also had some great comments about how Hawai'i has a different local ASL dialect, which she tries to preserve in her own signing so that it will not die out.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Friel's diary notes on writing Translations
Friel kept notes during the process of writing Translations. These are excerpts:
15 May 1979
. . . One thing that keeps eluding me: the wholeness, the integrity of that Gaelic past. Maybe because I don't believe in it.
16 May 1979
I can envisage a few scenes: the hedge-school classroom; the love-scene between lovers who have no common language; the actual task of places being named. Nothing more.
22 May 1979
The thought occurred to me that what I was circling around was a political play and the thought panicked me. But it is a political play--how can that be avoided? If it is not political, what is it? Inaccurate history? Social drama?
23 May 1979
I believe that I am reluctant to even name the characters, maybe because the naming-taming process is what the play is about.
29 May 1979
. . . I am now at the point at which the play must be begun and yet all I know about it is this:
I don't want to write a play about Irish peasants being suppressed by English sappers.
I don't want to write a threnody on the death of the Irish language.
I don't want to write a play about land-surveying.
Indeed I don't want to write a play about naming places.
And yet portions of all of these are relevant. Each is part of the atmosphere in which the real play lurks.
5 November 1979
The play, named Translations, completed. . . .All art is a diary of evolution; markings that seemed true of and for their time; adjustments in stance and disposition; opening to what seemed the persistence of the moment. Map-makings.
source: Murray, Christopher, ed. Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews: 1964-1999.
15 May 1979
. . . One thing that keeps eluding me: the wholeness, the integrity of that Gaelic past. Maybe because I don't believe in it.
16 May 1979
I can envisage a few scenes: the hedge-school classroom; the love-scene between lovers who have no common language; the actual task of places being named. Nothing more.
22 May 1979
The thought occurred to me that what I was circling around was a political play and the thought panicked me. But it is a political play--how can that be avoided? If it is not political, what is it? Inaccurate history? Social drama?
23 May 1979
I believe that I am reluctant to even name the characters, maybe because the naming-taming process is what the play is about.
29 May 1979
. . . I am now at the point at which the play must be begun and yet all I know about it is this:
I don't want to write a play about Irish peasants being suppressed by English sappers.
I don't want to write a threnody on the death of the Irish language.
I don't want to write a play about land-surveying.
Indeed I don't want to write a play about naming places.
And yet portions of all of these are relevant. Each is part of the atmosphere in which the real play lurks.
5 November 1979
The play, named Translations, completed. . . .All art is a diary of evolution; markings that seemed true of and for their time; adjustments in stance and disposition; opening to what seemed the persistence of the moment. Map-makings.
source: Murray, Christopher, ed. Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews: 1964-1999.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Sense Images
A list of sense images from Translations. I always compile these, in the hopes that looking at the sensory world of the play will aid me and the designers in creating that world. It's really in a neat chart, but I like how it comes out in a jumble below, more like poetry. In doing it, I noticed how much was broken or bitter.
Sense Sight Sound Smell Touch Taste
ACT ONE
Broken implements Gurnts Filthy smoke (Ulysses’ cloak) Wooden posts Pail of water
Soiled towel Nasal sounds Sarah’s flowers chains Bowl of milk
Dusty Music, hornpipe reel The sweet smell Ulysses: filthy hind skin Piece of bread
Shabby, filthy clothes Whistling through teeth “full as a pig” Pub drinks
Ulysses: fair skin, flaxen hair Bridget squeals Washing hands in water Strong tea, black
JJ: bald head Loud Lancey Cold bath whiseky
Flashing-eyed Athene
Hand-mirror
Black stalks
atlas
ACT TWO.i
Blank map Lancey’s screams Hot weather poteen
Black Ridge Music from Chatach house Wet dew Oranges from Dublin
Curly-haired laughter World’s old skin Potatoes
Fiddler, reel, guitar Warm Mediterranean buttermilk
Erosion “something is being eroded” Water in well
ACT TWO.ii
White skin Soaking grass, feet
clay
Soft hands
ACT THREE
Broken paper bag Whistling through teeth Sweet smell Rain Black tea
Fire Army tents building tears Soda bread
Fresh green land Maire’s invisible map
Fire
Hugh and JJ: wet
JJ’s spasm
Sense Sight Sound Smell Touch Taste
ACT ONE
Broken implements Gurnts Filthy smoke (Ulysses’ cloak) Wooden posts Pail of water
Soiled towel Nasal sounds Sarah’s flowers chains Bowl of milk
Dusty Music, hornpipe reel The sweet smell Ulysses: filthy hind skin Piece of bread
Shabby, filthy clothes Whistling through teeth “full as a pig” Pub drinks
Ulysses: fair skin, flaxen hair Bridget squeals Washing hands in water Strong tea, black
JJ: bald head Loud Lancey Cold bath whiseky
Flashing-eyed Athene
Hand-mirror
Black stalks
atlas
ACT TWO.i
Blank map Lancey’s screams Hot weather poteen
Black Ridge Music from Chatach house Wet dew Oranges from Dublin
Curly-haired laughter World’s old skin Potatoes
Fiddler, reel, guitar Warm Mediterranean buttermilk
Erosion “something is being eroded” Water in well
ACT TWO.ii
White skin Soaking grass, feet
clay
Soft hands
ACT THREE
Broken paper bag Whistling through teeth Sweet smell Rain Black tea
Fire Army tents building tears Soda bread
Fresh green land Maire’s invisible map
Fire
Hugh and JJ: wet
JJ’s spasm
to mix race
For some other research I'm doing this summer, I've been reading about miscegenation, a horrible word. The context I'm working in concerns the inter-marriage or inter-racial love between blacks and whites in the U.S. There are numerous plays about it in the late 19th and early 20th century. But in reading more about it, I realize that whereas I've only known it as applied to black-white relations, the word applies to all manner of boundary-crossing between all sorts of people (Jews and Christians, Asians and Caucasians, etc.)
Hugh O'Donnell would be proud of me here: the root of the word "miscegenation" is from the from Latin miscere ‘to mix’ + genus ‘race’
Anyway, I realize that to me, it's no big deal in Translations when Yolland and Maire get together, but of course in the world of the play their union is a form of miscegenation, a mixing of Irish and British, probably of Catholic and Protestant (although this play is oddly silent about religious matters). And a directorial challenge is how to convey the enormous significance of their taboo-breaking, for an audience who may not be aware of the chasm between Irish and British culture in this era. Although their II.ii love scene is so innocent and sincere, their miscegenation leads to the murder of Yolland.
JIMMY (to Maire): Do you know the Greek word endogamein? It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you don't cross those borders casually--both sides get very angry. Now, the problem is this: Is Athene sufficiently mortal or am I sufficiently godlike for the marriage to be acceptable to her people and to my people? You should think about that.
it reminds me of the problem of conveying to today's audience the taboo of a Montague loving a Capulet
Hugh O'Donnell would be proud of me here: the root of the word "miscegenation" is from the from Latin miscere ‘to mix’ + genus ‘race’
Anyway, I realize that to me, it's no big deal in Translations when Yolland and Maire get together, but of course in the world of the play their union is a form of miscegenation, a mixing of Irish and British, probably of Catholic and Protestant (although this play is oddly silent about religious matters). And a directorial challenge is how to convey the enormous significance of their taboo-breaking, for an audience who may not be aware of the chasm between Irish and British culture in this era. Although their II.ii love scene is so innocent and sincere, their miscegenation leads to the murder of Yolland.
JIMMY (to Maire): Do you know the Greek word endogamein? It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you don't cross those borders casually--both sides get very angry. Now, the problem is this: Is Athene sufficiently mortal or am I sufficiently godlike for the marriage to be acceptable to her people and to my people? You should think about that.
it reminds me of the problem of conveying to today's audience the taboo of a Montague loving a Capulet
Monday, June 30, 2008
history/drama
from a fascinating article with comments by both Friel and the author of the book Paper Landscape (John Andrews); Andrews's book partly inspired the writing of Friel's Translations.
FRIEL:
Writing a historical play may bestow certain advantages but it also imposes particular responsibilities. The apparent advantages are the established historical facts or at least the received historical ideas in which the work is rooted and which gives it its apparent familiarity and accessibility. The concomitant responsibility is to acknowledge those facts or ideas but not to defer to them. Drama is first a fiction, with the authority of fiction. You don't go to Macbeth for history. (p. 124)
(Barry, Kevin, Brian Friel, and John Andrews, "Translations and a Paper Landscape: Between Fiction and History." The Crane Bag 7.2 (1983): 118-124.)
FRIEL:
Writing a historical play may bestow certain advantages but it also imposes particular responsibilities. The apparent advantages are the established historical facts or at least the received historical ideas in which the work is rooted and which gives it its apparent familiarity and accessibility. The concomitant responsibility is to acknowledge those facts or ideas but not to defer to them. Drama is first a fiction, with the authority of fiction. You don't go to Macbeth for history. (p. 124)
(Barry, Kevin, Brian Friel, and John Andrews, "Translations and a Paper Landscape: Between Fiction and History." The Crane Bag 7.2 (1983): 118-124.)
Thursday, May 29, 2008
a good knowledge of English
In 1896, English was made the official language of instruction in all schools in Hawai'i.
In 1903, a writer in Paradise of the Pacific wrote this:
"By the end of this century Hawaiian speech will have as little usage as Gaelic or Irish has now . . . The native children in the public and private schools are getting a good knowledge of English, and indeed, it would be doing them an injustice to deny them instruction in English speech."
quote in Shutz, Albert J, The Voices of Eden, Honolulu, U Hawai'i P, 1994, p. 355.
In 1903, a writer in Paradise of the Pacific wrote this:
"By the end of this century Hawaiian speech will have as little usage as Gaelic or Irish has now . . . The native children in the public and private schools are getting a good knowledge of English, and indeed, it would be doing them an injustice to deny them instruction in English speech."
quote in Shutz, Albert J, The Voices of Eden, Honolulu, U Hawai'i P, 1994, p. 355.
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