Att läsa en pjäs /// To read a play

Jag kom hem från min Londonresa med ett antal pjäser i kappsäcken. Några var sådana som jag länge velat läsa, andra var mer eller mindre impulsköp och en del var pjäser jag såg medan jag var där. En pjäs, en teatertext, finns i gråzon mellan litteratur och teater, text och iscensättandet av text. Tidigare i vår skrev Mark Lawson en artikel på The Guardians kultursidor om skillnaden mellan att läsaoch se en pjäs. Det är intressant artikel som jag gärna rekommenderar för dem som är intresserade av sådana frågor.

Det finns några pjäser jag läst på senaste tid som har varit otroligt fina läsupplevelser. De har också alla blivit iscensatta även om jag inte har sett någon av dem själv. Trots det har jag svårt att föreställa mig en iscensättning som skulle kunna mäta sig med mitt första möte med texten, som just text – men uttryckligen teatertext. Det är pjäser skrivna med en stark känsla för det sceniska och alla de möjligheter som teater som form erbjuder. För mig som dramatiker är det otroligt inspirerande och glädjande att läsa pjäser som är uttryckligen en stark text utan att vara enbart litteratur. Pjäser där konstruktionen och utgångspunkten är teater och det sceniska.

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I came back from my trip to London with a suitcase full of plays. Some were plays I’ve wanted to read for a long time, some were impulse buys while others were plays I’d seen in production while there. A play, a theatre text, exists in a gray area between literature and theatre, between text and the staging of text. Earlier this spring Mark Lawson wrote an article in The Guardian’s arts section about the difference between reading andwatching a play. It’s an interesting article that I recommend to anyone who’s interested in things like that.  

There are several plays I’ve read lately that have been great reading experiences. All of them have been staged even though I haven’t seen any of them in production. Despite that I find it difficult to imagine a production that would match my first encounter with the text, as text – but specifically a theatre text. They are plays written with a strong sense of the scenic and all the opportunities that theatre as a medium offers. As a playwright, I find it incredibly inspiring and gratifying to read plays that are expressly a strong text without being only literature. Plays where the construction and the starting point is theatre and the scenic.

The Old Vic's The Crucible (English only)

I just got home from watching The Old Vic production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the local cinema. And I can’t not write something about it. Perhaps because I went on my own and could have this rant in the pub afterwards. Perhaps because it brought into focus some things I’ve been thinking about, or around, lately. At some point I’ll do this post in Swedish as well, but for now I’ll stick to English. I might not be as into it then as I am now, this things tend to pass after a night’s sleep, but in that case I’ll just do a rewrite in the translation.

     A.   Great play! Lately I’ve been feeling slightly ashamed of the fact that I’ve read and seen very few of “the classics”. I remember reading some Arthur Miller in my teens – but that was mainly because it was some of the few plays in the library. There was Shakespeare of course, which didn’t really interest me in my teens, apart from Romeo and Juliet, thanks to Baz Luhrmann. There was some Strindberg, but I’ve never got on with him. Instead I read Americans plays from the post-war years, by playwrights like Williams and Miller. Although I don’t think I ever read The Crucible, probably because I thought it was going to be difficult and long. Which wasn’t a very good excuse for not reading it. Obviously a lot of the hype around the plays has to do with Miller and the McCarthy era in American history. Watching the play today it resonates with that, but it also resonates with things going on right now, or 20 years ago. All of this without any misplaced attempts of making it “contemporary”. It is contemporary because it is human. It doesn’t have to be forced to be contemporary. It is. And I, watching, can figure it out all on my own, without the restrictions of too much directing trying to bend the play one way or the other.  

     

     B.   Great production! No production of is perfect of course. For me, a lot of the things that weren’t so great were mostly to do with the filming. It was done slightly differently to the previous two I’ve seen in the cinema, both done through NT Live. This was “captured” live but there were certain effects (like pictures on top of each other, slow-motion, etc) added on to. The space, and the way the stage was set up, brought its own problems with it for filming I’m sure. But what made it a great production for me, was that it was about the story, all the way. The actors knew what they, and their characters, were doing. There was purpose to all of their lines and actions. They might have misled the audience from time to time, keeping us on our toes, but it all came together, they were all whole characters who had to make decisions and take actions. And the language as well, as an equal part of the whole artistic expression – that something that I had a long discussion about today with a collegue. Unfortunately that seems to be quite rare at the moment. All of these things made it a pleasure to watch, even through a screen. It started out with the stakes high, and just kept raising them, but all within the logic of the world of the story. A lot of tears, sweat and saliva, but hey, for once it worked. A bit of stalking around the stage because burdened with trying to save you wife and being helpless in the face of mass psychosis (more or less), but hey, that didn’t really bother me either.  

     C.   How great is it to be able to see productions like these? It’s really great. This is the first time I’ve seen this play performed and it was great to see it in a production like this.

Tre frön till tankar om översättning /// Three seeds to thoughts on translation

Under hösten som gick funderade jag en del på det här med översättningar, översättande och (min relation till) språk. En av de bästa böcker om översättande jag har lästa är David Bellos bok "Is That A Fish In You Ear?: The Amazing Adventure of Translation", som jag varmt rekommenderar till alla som är vill lyssna på mig. I oktober så publicerade också tidningen Guardian två olika artiklar som på olika sätt behandlade översättandet av pjäser, en om en serie nyöversättningar av Ibsens pjäser, en om en nyöversättning av Tjechovs "Körsbärstärdgården".

De här olika texterna planterade fröet till en ännu bara halvt tänkt tanke om ämnet. Jag skulle gärna med mera tid och eftertanke på allvar försöka tänka tanken färdigt och formulera mig om den. Istället blir det det här.

• Jag tror att det är skillnad mellan att översätta en s.k. klassiker och en s.k. ny text, som inte är belastad av en översättningstradition eller en produktions-/tolkningshistoria. En text som inte är hemsökt av det förflutna i den bemärkelsen för att låna Marvin Carlsons begrepp.                       
• Jag tror att gränsen mellan att översätta och att bearbeta/adaptera är väldigt suddig, på gott och ont. Det här gäller både historier som är skrivna och utspelar sig i en annan tid än de är skrivna i och berättelser som utspelar sig i andra kulturer än den de spelas i.                                                
• Jag tror att det är skillnad mellan att översätta en text från en "dominant" (i brist på bättre ord) kultur och en text som översätt till en "dominant" kultur. Med andra ord, det är olika saker översätter en pjäs från engelska till svenska, när man kan utgå ifrån att de mottagande publiken i viss grad har en relation till ursprungskulturen, genom egna erfarenheter eller genom (populär)kultur och att översätta en pjäs från svenska till engelska, där man inte på samma sätt kan utgå ifrån att publiken har samma typ av insikt i ursprungskulturen.

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During this past autumn I thought a lot about translation, the act of translating and (my relationship to) language.  One of the best books about translating I’ve read is David Bellos’, "Is That A Fish In You Ear?: The Amazing Adventure of Translation", which I keep recommending to anyone who cares to listen.  In October The Guardian published two articles, that both dealt with the translation of plays from different perspectives. One about a series of new translations of Ibsen’splays, and one about a new translation of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”.

All of these texts have planted a seed to an so far only half thought through idea on the subject. I would like at some point, with more time and deliberation, try to think these ideas through and express myself more eloquently on the subject. Instead I’ll write this. 

• I think there’s a difference between translating a so called classic and a new play, that isn’t weighed down by the tradition created by previous translations or by a production history/tradition of interpretation. A text that isn’t haunted by the past in that sense, to borrow Marvin Carlson’s concept.

• I think the line between translation and adaptation is very blurry, for better or worse. This applies both to stories that are written and take place in a different time to the one they were written in, and to stories that take place in a culture different to the one the play’s performed in.

• I think there is a difference between translating a text from a “dominant” (for lack of a better word) culture and a text that is translated into a “dominant” culture. In other words, it’s a different beast from English to Swedish, when one can assume that the receiving audience will have some sort of relationship to the original culture, through their own experience or (popular) culture, compared to translating a text from Swedish to English, when one can’t make the same type of assumption about any degree of familiarity with the original culture.

Intervju med Lucy Kerbel /// Interview with Lucy Kerbel

Det här är en aningen förkortad och bearbetad version av min intervju med Lucy Kerbel som publicerades i Ny Tid i höstas, översatt till engelska.

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This is a slightly reworked version of my interview with Lucy Kerbel which was published in Ny Tid (in Swedish) this autumn, translated into English.

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MEETING LUCY KERBEL

It’s the beginning of October and I’m sitting in The Cut, The Young Vic’s bar. It’s still fairly quiet, just a couple of people on the ground floor of the building. Some sitting on their own with computers, tablets or newspapers, others caught up in low-voiced conversations surrounded by piles of paper and computers. I’ve chosen a table across from the door and I’m waiting for Lucy Kerbel. Since I don’t know what she looks like I decided to bring her book A 100 Great Plays for Women instead of a flower in my buttonhole to signal my intentions.

The book was published in November 2013 and Lucy tells me that it’s sold well for a theatre book, it’s been one of Nick Hern Book’s best sellers and been on the National Theatre’s bookshop’s Top 10 list. And this for a book that wasn’t even meant to be a book, but a database.

We talk for almost an hour about both her book and about equality in the theatre world in England. She tells me about her work with different youth theatre groups, who most of the time consist mainly of girls, and how she was placed before the question of what to do with these groups. “I just couldn’t believe that there weren’t any plays to do with them.” So that’s one of the reasons for bringing these plays to the forefront, she knows from experience that there is a real demand for plays who feature female actors. She goes on to say that she wants it to be a book that’s easy to read, accessible and that brings these plays into peoples’ consciousness.

She uses the expression “to create a new truth” while we talk. That is to say that we shouldn’t just accept a statement like “there are no good parts or plays for women” as a definitive truth, but rather explore it and see if that is actually the case or not. Lucy points out that a lot of these plays just didn’t have anyone that championed them and that’s why they’ve been forgotten. She says that we shouldn’t forget that our knowledge of plays is connected to what’s been publicly performed and published and in that way has been preserved.

When she talks about working with the book she says that together with her editor she decided what should be covered, and what should, or shouldn’t, be brought up in the presentations. She says that for her one of the things that were important was to not become too descriptive and that way bring too much of her own interpretation into it. She says that in the beginning it was difficult writing confidently about what made the plays good since she wasn’t used to speaking in such definitive terms.

Towards the end we get into a discussion about what the consequences are of a limited number of productions with parts for women, and especially different types of women. In a theatre culture where year-long contracts are an exception and project based work is the norm it becomes more difficult for female actors to make in the business, when they feel more like a visitor than an active part of it. That’s why Lucy in this book wants to focus on stories that place women at the centre of events, plays that offer challenging, difficult, funny parts for women. “It felt like there were already books about female playwrights, anthologies with plays written by women and collections of plays that were mostly already known with one large part for a woman, while the rest of the cast was male.”

The discussion about equality in the theatre, and in this case, which stories and bodies are presented on stage, she sees as something that concerns and should engage both men and women. She also sees these questions as different sides of the same issue, which stories are presented on stage, who writes them and who portrays them.

When we part ways Lucy goes to prepare next evening’s seminar, the first in a series of six at the National Theatre, based on the book. When I take part in the seminar, on the theme “power”, the discussion touches on both the absence of female playwrights in the canon as well as the lack of production that places the female experience at the forefront, even though the majority of theatre audiences are female. I can’t help but notice that these are questions that engage the audience at the seminar, which consists of both women and men.