crossing thresholds: translation and interpretation in vietnam and at the irish rep

Brian Friel’s Translations, at the Irish Rep, deals with language and communication (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Last month, I had a dream that I had a key role in a play, and I was performing magnificently. I was brimming with confidence, the audience was responding beautifully, and my fellow actors could not have been more proud, since I had no experience onstage.

And then, suddenly, it all came to a screeching halt. I was done; there was nothing left.

We were only halfway through the show, and I had no idea what was supposed to happen next; my mind was completely empty — no dialogue, no stage directions, no plot. I was shaking as I told my fellow castmates that I couldn’t continue. I didn’t even know how I had pulled everything off up until then, but that was the end of it.

I felt terrible, like a fraud, yet this was unlike any previous dream I’d ever had, whether set in school, at work, or anywhere else, because it wasn’t just me forgetting to study for a test, walking outside without pants and shoes, searching for a clean bathroom, or flying nimbly through the air before tumbling fast toward the ground, waking up right before making contact with land.

A few days later, I was at the Irish Rep, watching Doug Hughes’s current revival of Brian Friel’s 1980 Translations, which kicks off the company’s “Friel Project,” to be followed by 1979’s Aristocrats, 1964’s Tony-nominated Philadelphia, Here I Come!, and 1994’s Molly Sweeney.

About twenty minutes into the show, one of the actors began hesitating, then rubbing their face as if they might be feeling ill. Unable to recite their lines, the actor was led offstage by others and the play stopped. A man came out to explain that they would be taking a short break, saying something like, “Sometimes you have it, and sometimes you just lose it,” letting us know that the actor had simply forgotten their lines.

I had never seen that before, but it sent me right back to my dream. According to the UK site Happy Beds, “a dream about failure represents feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and low self-esteem. These dreams may follow a rejection in your waking life or a situation where you have not performed as you would have liked. . . . Failure can also be interpreted as your mind recognizing that, although you may have made some mistakes, you have an opportunity to learn from them.”

Translations is set at a hedge-school in Baile Beag in County Donegal in 1933, as members of the British military arrive for the Ordnance Survey, mapping the land in a way that will benefit England and renaming towns and cities, erasing the native Gaelic and replacing it with English, with no regard for the history of the regions and the Irish language. It is an extension of British colonialism, this time involving communication. Friel himself said about the work, “The play has to do with language and only language.”

Owen (Seth Numrich) is a Baile Beag native who went to Dublin to make it as a businessman and has now returned with the British, serving as a translator between Capt. Lancey (Rufus Collins) and Lt. Yolland (Raffi Barsoumian) of the Royal Engineers and Irish hedge-master Hugh (Seán McGinley), who is Owen’s father, and the rest of the Irish locals: Hugh’s other son, Manus (Owen Campbell), a teacher who does not want to surrender their language and traditions; Sarah (Erin Wilhelmi), who has a speech defect and is learning how to talk from Manus; the troublemaker Doalty (Owen Laheen); the gossipmonger Bridget (Oona Roche); Máire (Mary Wiseman), who is excited about learning English because she wants to go to America; and Jimmy Jack (the always superb John Keating, one of New York City’s stage treasures), a brilliant, bedraggled man in his sixties who knows Latin and Greek in addition to Irish and often reads out loud from the classics.

Owen tells the others at the school, “I’m employed as a part-time, underpaid, civilian interpreter. My job is to translate the quaint, archaic tongue you people persist in speaking into the King’s good English.” It turns out that Owen is a collaborator, selectively translating what Capt. Lancey says in order to make the mapping and name changes so England can consolidate its control over Ireland and impose more onerous taxation. Owen is unable to see how he is being used; Capt. Lancey and Lt. Yolland don’t even know his name, calling him “Roland” instead of Owen.

Conversely, the young Lt. Yolland, who is attracted to Máire, is enamored of Ireland as well and tells Hugh’s class of Gaelic speakers, “I can only say that I feel — I feel very foolish to — to — to be working here and not to speak your language. But I intend to rectify that — with Roland’s help — indeed I do.”

Students from more than three dozen nations join together in Vietnam for Buddhist seminar (photo by Dũng Lê)

I am writing this post from Vietnam, a country that was ruled by China two millennia ago, colonized by the French in 1877, occupied by Japan in 1940, and then steeped in a civil war pitting north against south (with US interference), making me think of the Troubles in Ireland that began in the 1960s between the Protestant north and the rest of the nation, which was primarily Catholic.

I am in Vietnam attending the Buddhist seminar “The Four Seals of Dharma” taught by Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche at the Tam Chûc Pagoda Complex in Ha Nam. People from some thirty-six countries are at the teachings, which Rinpoche delivers in a mix of English and mostly Tibetan; simultaneous translations are available in Vietnamese, English, German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Bhutanese, French, Chinese, Nepali, and other languages, on different stations over transistor radios as well as via a livestream. The room is filled with love and respect among people from many nations who are unable to communicate verbally but connect nonetheless; in fact, Rinpoche met with attendees from Ukraine and Russia to talk about fostering peace.

In the fall of 2022, Russian-born actor and director Kyrylo Kashlikov staged an adaptation of Translations in Ukrainian for the Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theatre in response to the Russian invasion. “To me this story is about people living in the age of change,” Kashlikov said in a production note. “About how this change impacts everyone personally and the society as a whole. About choice, dignity, love. About crossing a threshold beyond which one loses themselves.” 

Back at the Irish Rep, after about a half hour, the actors returned to the stage. The person who had lost their place carried two sheets of paper, most likely pages from the script. Through the rest of the play, it was hard not to worry that any pause, hesitation, or stutter from any member of the cast might augur further problems; the fragility was painstaking to watch even as the actors supported one another, not wanting to have another unexpected break. It was like sitting on pins and needles; when Hugh says, “To remember everything is a form of madness,” I couldn’t help but think about what had happened earlier.

I portrayed a reporter on the scene for our temple’s 2021 virtual Purim spiel (screenshot courtesy T&V)

As I have written before, I am not and never will be a performer. I am terrified of public speaking. During the pandemic, I participated in a recorded Zoom version of my temple’s Purim spiel, and let’s just say I was not asked back the following year. So I am in awe of what actors do onstage, eight days a week.

I’ve been to several Q&As following one-man shows in which the actor was asked by an audience member how they remember all the lines. Both Tom Hewitt, in Another Medea, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, in Lackawanna Blues, took offense at the question, essentially answering, “It’s my job. It’s what we do. I don’t ask you how you do your job.”

Inspired by actual events — Friel’s great-great-grandfather was a hedge-schoolmaster who taught the classics to Irish peasants — Translations has been extremely well reviewed, including for the actor who had the issue the night I went, resulting in an extension through December 31. Charlie Corcoran’s rustic schoolroom set puts you right in 1833 Baile Beag, with period music by sound designer Ryan Rumery and authentic costumes by Alejo Vietti. Yet that one stumble took me out of the play, and I was not able to get back into the flow, despite Hughes’s lovely direction.

In one way or another, each of us occasionally loses track of where we are, whether in dreams, at the theater, or in daily life. It’s part of what makes us human, no matter what language we speak.

And in every case, the show must go on.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]