Guest Blog: Voila! Theatre Festival Artists Discuss Language Diversity and Interpretation

London's Voila! Theatre Festival is currently hosting 72 shows across nine venues, with 35 different languages being spoken. 

Here we hear the perspectives about the impact of language diversity and audience interpretations from the creators of shows postdramatiko,(Greek) that opened the festival, Magic Cube (Hungarian Theatre Company) and Sub Titles Over (Catalan, and Spanish) that will be performed over the next couple of weeks.

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μεταδραματικό / postdramatic opened the Voila! Theatre Festival at The Cockpit on 5 and 6 November. Appearing at the festival through an exchange award with Thessaloniki Fringe Festival in Greece, the show was presented in Greek on one night of its Voila! run, and in English the next night. Creator-performer Thekla Gaiti reflects on activating a different version of herself by performing in two different languages.

Thekla says:

A few years ago, a Lithuanian performer friend living in England told me about her experience performing a show where she would change between languages. She told me that each language activates her imagination in a different way. The word “sea” in English evokes different concepts in her head than the word “sea” in Lithuanian; she sees English seas in her imagination.

When I perform in Greek - or even when I speak in English with a Greek accent - I feel Greek. I use a lot of hand gestures and facial expressions. The Greek style of acting is distinctive, it’s very loud and almost hysterical in approaching intense feelings and emotions. It has an official quality connected to the ancient theatre on our shoulders. 

But when I try to perform in an English accent, I feel international. I automatically express myself in a different way: my brain would shift into different intonations, and a different physical way of being present. I shift into a fictional version of myself where I am a local of a foreign country, an international citizen. There is a copy of Thekla that is activated, and connected to all the British acting that I have been exposed to in TV and film.

Comparing the two performances at Voila!, the Greek version gave a sense of folklore or something strange and exotic, something different than you. I connected to the audience on an artistic level. The English version was a more human connection. I felt like I was offering something on the audience’s terms, thinking about how it would be best to receive it. There was a sense of making an extra effort to connect with you, to say I am here for you and I am gladly doing the extra step to be with you. It was heart-opening.

Sub Titles Over runs at The Space until 16 November. The show, which explores state censorship and media control through translation and subtitles, is performed in Catalan, with English captions.

Writer & performer Marina Cusí says: 

Our company Mad, Who? Theatre specialises in multicultural and multilingual captioned theatre. ‘Sub Titles Over’ relies on our audiences not being able to understand what the performer is saying—in Catalan—but being able to connect with what they are trying to communicate through their performance, only to slowly realise how the English captions are trying to manipulate them and control the narrative of what’s happening on stage.

It’s very interesting to see how the work is being received by different audiences at Voila!, as we are not only welcoming English-speaking audiences, but people who do understand Catalan. While the former goes through the surprise of finding out that they have been lied to through a slow realisation, the latter tends to experience anger and frustration at the deceit carried out by the captions from the very start of the story, which leads to different communities having a completely different experience and understanding of the play, despite having just seen the exact same show!

Magic Cube is a story of six childhood friends, exploring how these foundational relationships change as we grow up, grow together, or grow apart. London-based Hungarian theatre company HubArt presents their devised show in English for the first time, at Applecart Arts from 21-23 November.

Director & performer Blanka Molnár says:

Whilst translating our show from Hungarian to English we faced challenges not only with proverbs and specific sayings but also how we translate some traditions and cultural thinking through those words. We have decided to keep some sayings as they are literally translated to keep it ‘foreignised’ while in some cases we found an English version of the same phrase to get the human behaviour across. 

We found that the stories and motivations are accessible in any language. However, understanding the context helps to form the whole picture. In our play we kept the Hungarian customs and sometimes even in Hungarian language to share our cultural exchange. In this way our integrity is portrayed differently, but it is not compromised.

Voila Theatre Festival – Connecting Border-Busting Theatre to Citizens of Everywhere. The festival runs until the 24 November at nine London venues.

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