Translating Italian Theatre.
A work experience at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
A. De Martino-Cappuccio
Introduction
When I was offered to work as a translator for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, I was absolutely thrilled for several reasons. First, this experience fitted perfectly in my research, which explores English translations of plays by the Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984). Therefore, working in a theatrical environment was exactly what a mainly theoretical activity required, as I could gain further knowledge from a practical view point. Furthermore, the organization I was going to work for is one of the most prestigious in theatrical world, and being part of it represents a top aspiration for anybody engaged in theatre. It is clear then, how I felt at the perspective of working for the RSC. In addition, Pippo Delbono’s company, renowned for winningan Ubu Award in 1997 and the Italian Critics’ Prize in 1998, was well known to me for its adventurous and intellectual style, and again a great aspiration to work with. Finally, entering the world of theatre and sampling dreamlike situations was as unique as rare an opportunity, which I was to embrace wholeheartedly.
From the 26th of January until the 3rd of February 2007, I was involved in one of The Complete Works Festival productions, Henry V, as part of an initiative of the Royal Shakespeare Company, aiming to stage all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, sonnets and long poems at the same event, taking place between April 2006 and April 2007.
The objective of such an ambitious project is to offer different interpretations of the works of who is considered to be the most important playwright in the history of theatre. Theatre companies from across Britain and the world have been invited to present their versions of Shakespeare’s oeuvres performed in different foreign languages as well as in English.The Director of the Complete Works Festival, Deborah Shaw, and her assistant and co-ordinator Rachael Barber, organized the Festival in such a way that the quintessence of English theatre could be reinterpreted in the light of the most diverse cultures and philosophies. This was achieved through collaboration between visiting theatre companies and the RSC. For examples, Titus Andronicuswasrepresented in a Japanese setting by director Yukio Ninagawa, who employed symbolism to portray the birth of Romeby creating an estranged effect. In the same way, Richard IIIwas staged by an Arab company, directed by the English-Kuwaiti director Sulayman Albassam, who set the play in an unnamed Arab country. The show was performed in Arabic with English surtitles(since they were projected high up on screens put up in the theatre) and made clear reference to the current political situation in the Middle East. In this perspective, RSC invited avant-gardetheatre company Compagnia Pippo Delbono from Italy, who performed Henry V,directed by Pippo Delbono, a representation of war hysteria, where winners and losers were both victims of the same downfall.
My involvement in the project was as a translator and a liaison person between the two companies and between the Italian company and the Chorus, made of local non professional young actors, who were employed to create stunning portrays of war and destruction. By working both as a member of the hosting company and as a ‘voice’ from the acting company, I benefitedfrom anexceptional experience, that is, participating in the setting up of the play and observing it from the outside, in a detached manner, which allowed me to fully introject all that was being explained and performed. My standpoint was ubiquitous, since I shared both the audience and the artists’ perspective. Besides, since I was conveying Pippo’s ideas, which were essential for the right execution of each scene, I became part of the rationalizing process which stood at the base of the play. I could see things which the audience could not see, namely the painstaking attention to details in the creation of a scene or the inner motive of a particular movement. On the other hand, as a viewer, I was able to appreciate the same scene from an aesthetic point of view, enjoying the artistic effect so meticulously constructed.
The present accounttherefore, is a journal of a unique and fulfilling experience of which I am grateful to the RSC in the first instance and to the Compagnia Pippo Delbono to whom, now, I feel indissolubly attached.
A journey of emotions
For the first three days the company worked away from the Swan Theatre, in the RehearsalRooms, located in the Northern part of town. These days were dedicated to the creation of Chorus scenes with young actors who had only briefly met Pippo a few months before at the audition. During this time Pippo and Pepe, who was both actor and choreographer, shared direction. The Chorus scenes were meticulously rehearsed over and over again, in order to achieve faultless results. It was fascinating to see how such young, and in a way, inexperienced actors, turned into impeccable performers by simply executing those scrupulous instructions. My involvement at the Rehearsal Rooms gained me a total insight ofthe building up of a play. I was a ravenous observer of all the tricks of the trade, and I realized how hard being an actor can be. Not only is it a strenuous job, it also requires high power of concentration, since the director’s instructions must be first understood and then memorized to be put back in the sequence. One particular scene, The Mound, one of the most impressive scenes of the whole play, required the twenty-five actors to pile up in an apparently effortless manner and remain in that position for the entire duration of the scene, which lasted more than eight minutes. Instructing the actors on how to performsucha difficult task seemed hard enough, let alone through the language barrier. What Pepe wanted to achieve was similarity between the bodies’ heap and a painting by Caravaggio, therefore I was particularly concerned about accuracy in translating instructions, in order to obtain the final effect of a work of art.In the end the result was breathtaking.
Since the play was going to be performed in Italian with English surtitles, they had to be accurately prepared in order to be shown in concomitance with the recited words followingboth rhythm and sense. This was a particularly hard task; althoughthe Shakespearian verses were the essence of the play, the Italian translation had its own poetry and rhythm, which were equally crucial for the mise en scène. In addition, according to the director’s view, words represented only a minimalist accompaniment to the scene, so the original text, while retaining its structure, had to be matched to the tempo of the acting.
Working on the surtitles was one of the most interesting parts of the whole experience. Studying translated theatre implies working on parallel texts, which present tangible differences easily recognizable. On the contrary, surtitles are mainly an accompaniment to the acting and therefore must be organized in such a way that, while they translate the text, they do not interfere with the acting. This was particularly important in Delbono’s play, since words were essentially illustrating portrays represented on scene. Once more, rhythm played a crucial role, insofar as Italian and English were to be coordinated in order to achieve a perfect unison with the visual effect. Preparing surtitles, therefore, required a great deal of accuracy on the one hand, and creativity on the other. Interestingly, in the text there was a French nursery rhyme, which was recited during a cabaret-style scene, which had English equivalent only to a certain extent, and yet had to be translated entirely as a children’s poem, with the same tempo as the French one. Deborah spent, I suppose, the whole night thinking of it, and the following day produced the most ingenious of the translations.
Given the importance of precise timing in the projection of surtitles,Italian was an essential requirement to ensure exact correspondence between text and words, therefore, I operated them. Such activity proved again extremely useful, since I ended up knowing both transcripts so thoroughly that I felt the text, rather than followed it. Furthermore, operating surtitles required a great deal of concentration and co-ordination, both skills being relevant also in academic contexts, such as public presentations. Once more, I took advantage of an excellent opportunity of public performance.
Whenwe moved to the ‘Swan’, as it was called by the theatre people, a new experience began. The peculiar four-winged structure of the stage, protruding into the stalls, makes it more magical, since the actors are in close contact with the audience. Even on this occasion I benefited from my ubiquitous position. As an observer, whenever I was with the director in the circle watching the Chorus scenes, and as part of the troupe when I was on stage, translating instructions on a particular scene. Stage perspective is definitely exciting. The glaring lights also give out very reassuring warmth. The smell of wood together with the hollowness of the floor gives a floating sensation. Finally, being so close to the audience facilitates emotional contact with it and makes the whole experience totally fulfilling.
On the day of the first performance there was a strange tension in the air. The Chorus was preoccupied with perfecting the final movements. The actors were adjusting their positions on stage, very different bothin shape and size to the ones they were used to. My presence became less required by the director and I was more involved in the technical aspect of the play, translating for the sound operator when he was communicating with his English counterpart and for the stage manager, Nicky Cox, when she needed to organize the tight schedule for the day. Also on my side, tension was building up. In a few hours time I would have been called upon to make sure that the audience received the best possible impression from the English translation, which had to be present but not intruding. All the work to help put up the show had been done, but a lot of effort still was needed to make the performance completely successful. Half an hour before the beginning of the show the stage was totally empty: actors, technicians, stage manager, and production people had reached their positions. The theatre was there to welcome the audience, which in fifteen minutes would have taken their seats ready for the show to begin.
Another way to see theatre
If I were to define Pippo Delbono’s theatre, I would say it is a holistic experience, where body and soul come together, the former being the expression of the latter and vice versa. Inspired by Oriental theatre, Pippo firmly believes that perfection is obtained through endless repetition of the same movement, which has to become automatic in order to express any emotion. He says that any form of performing artrequires such level of technical perfection that it can become live and speak for itself. Only a perfectly executed painting or piece of music can convey emotions, since the artist, who is not preoccupied with technique, can fully express his or her feelings. The same happens to the actors who rehearse over and over again: their bodies become the means of their souls exuding strength and energy.
Although Pippo Delbono trained in Italy following mainstream theatre, he then moved to Denmark, and joined the Farfa theatre group, directed by Nagel Rasmussen,actress of the Odin Teatret,where he learnt Oriental techniques and philosophy; in 1987 he met Pina Bausch, who offered him to take part in one of the plays performed by her group Wuppertaler Tanztheater. This new experience infused a new soul into Pippo’s theatre, which became more and more experimental and innovative, melding drama with dance and music. As a result, his acting lost the characteristics of traditional theatre and became a fusion of music, dialogue and dance, a collage of dreamlike sequences, which transmit strong emotions to the viewer.
This brief overviewcreates a picture of the Henry V performed in Stratford, since the representation of the Shakespearian hero must be seen in the light of this new concept of theatre.The play was premiered in 1993, at Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona, and is a collage of Shakespeare’s text, music, dance and cabaret, jointly performed by professional actors andlocal people, who form the Chorus. Delbono states: “I am not interested in reconstructing history”, and his theatre is exactly this, a representation of emotions, of the struggle between power and humanity, between good and evil, and the way this struggle is presented generates enormous interest in those who come across this company. Indeed, although Henry V is the story of a king who conquered France with a small army of valorous soldiers, the play performed in Stratford is the story of a man, who was blinded by the desire of power, which brought destruction and despair rather than supremacy and satisfaction, in the same way as all wars do, no matter when and where they are fought. In order to achieve such an artistic result, great care was put into the creation of each individual scene, which had to have an inner strength rather than depend on the words uttered by the actors. Indeed, the entire Chorus scenes were speechless, and relied entirely on aesthetic representations.
As a translator, therefore, my main task was, in the first instance, to convey to theChorus the principles behind such theatre, and also to give instructions on how to achieve the expected result. That is the challenge I faced: intralingual translation from thoughts to actions, and interlingual translation from Italian into English. Since the latter could not be performed unless the philosophical principles were clear, that was the mostexciting aspect of the whole experience: becoming the ‘voice’ of new theatre, where the body becomes vehicle of ideas and aesthetics materialises on stage. Before embarking on this experience I had donesome research on theatre jargon so that I was equipped with the most common expressions. Instead I was required to produce technical terms relating to Buddhism, philosophy, music and history of theatre, which I recovered from my own experience in these fields as an amateur actress and singer during my years at university, my general interest in philosophy and my sons’ long term involvement in classical music. Rendering terms related to Buddhism was the most challenging thing to do, especially because Italian has a rather complex structure, whereas English is so much more direct. In addition, the young actors in the Chorus (some of them where only seventeen)were clearly taken aback by this approach, and looked at me with imploring eyes to explain to them,as clearly as possible, core concepts such as ‘the energy point’, which is located just below the abdomen and reflects in the lower back as well.
Translating theatre: a different approach
Such a philosophical approach therefore, affected the play at different stages. During the preparation of the show, insofar as each scene had to convey Delbono’s interpretation, so the instructions on how to achieve a specific result were pregnant of theoretical meaning, which the actual translation could not undermine.After the show, during an open discussion with the audience in a question-answer format, thesame approach became the core of the debate. For a second time my interpreting skills were summoned upon to conveyphilosophical questions to the director and return subsequent answersto the audience with the same characteristics. Although I cannot deny the thrill of the whole experience, I must admit it was far from what I had expected in a theatrical environment, if one takes into account that this question-time session happened on stage in front of about two hundred people, all very keen to know in depth the director’s thought.
A different aspect of my work as a translator, involved presentinga short film Grido,directed by Delbono and released in 2005, which wasshownafter one of the performances. On this occasion the audience was more technical, including other actors and theatre experts. Although it was nearly midnight and I had already been involved in the show, my adrenaline was summoned again and I became once more Delbono’s ‘voice’,giving an insight into the background of this very powerful, autobiographical film, which described his first encounter with Bobò, a deaf and dumb, who had been confined toa mental asylum for over twenty years, and subsequently became a member of the company. The setting wasin Naples (this city coming again as an omen on my path), portrayed in its crudest and most touching aspects, with all its social contradictions, which make it the most loved and at the same time the most despised of European cities. Also on this occasion I experienced what professional translation means: keeping a detached, yet appreciative attitude, even when dealing with poignant subjects. I was describing my own birth town, drawing attention to the absurdity of some aspects on the one hand, and to the sheer beauty of it on the other, both sides being very dear to me, and yet I had to do it with a proficient attitude, leaving aside any emotional involvement.Also this task proved very fulfilling, since the audience was once again very responsive and interested in theevent, and positive tension was palpable throughout the projection of the film.