APPROXIMATING A WORLD

A Conversation Between Wiebke Puls, Verena Regensburger and Kassandra Wedel

Translated by Anna Galt

The production “Luegen” was the first show directed by Verena Regensburger, which premiered at the Kammerspiele in Munich in April 2017. Although the play is not about translation, it says a lot more about that than many other subjects. Wiebke Puls, Verena Regensburger and Kassandra Wedel sit down together for us after three years, during which they’ve also shown the production on international tours, and reflect on their work, on truth, lies, perception and translation. In order to explore the (de-)construction of truth and perception, in “Luegen” an actress with hearing – Wiebke Puls – and a deaf actress – Kassandra Wedel come together. The stage becomes an experimental space for what is communicated consciously and unconsciously, a laboratory of authenticity, which invites the audience to decode, look more closely and observe. The text is based on the immediacy of formulated thoughts and in this way tries to approximate a form of truth. Meaning is communicated using words, but also gestures, facial expressions and interpersonal communication. It’s about changing perspectives and identification – not least using language, whether that’s spoken, sign language and/or body language. This production is not about translation, but about going in search of the truth and perception. The artists Wiebke Puls and Kassandra Wedel manage to do this with virtuosity under the equally open and sensitive direction of Verena Regensburger.

Then they do this together, music, building a song using echo loops, Wedel dances, Puls dances, both sing – and there is no lie between them, nothing false anymore. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Egbert Tholl)

ALLEGED LANGUAGE BARRIERS

WIEBKE PULS: Verena, did you have the feeling you had to translate during rehearsals? Because you had thought a lot about how the show could be communicated to both a hearing and a deaf audience. Did you have the impression that you had to perform translation work in our team?

VERENA REGENSBURGER: Not really. Alleged language barriers, different forms of communication are the immanent theme of the show and weave their way throughout almost every performance process. But there were new rules to the game, so to speak, in the team. We had to get used to turning towards you, Kassandra, no matter who we were talking to, so you could read our lips. In longer discussions, we had a sign language interpreter. I think that inevitably led to another more pronounced examination of language. Dealing with and to some extent learning sign language influenced the way we communicated in the production and gave the team as well as the audience a different way of accessing our everyday forms of interaction. For me it was a gift to develop and work on my first play with all of you. Especially the concentration that working together required – not in the sense of being laborious, but having a special focus – was an unusual experience that I cherish and cultivate in the way I work now. What I thought was really interesting was the way we rehearsed on the stage – I don’t think it’s my style to interrupt people or shout… I think you have to take your time. Once, we were walking around the room for 45 minutes with torches and we kind of got into a flow – in which we were extremely concentrated on each other, in which you were so attuned to each other and discovered something together. I think this is a much more powerful way of being creative than if I were to shout how I want to see it at you from outside.

WIEBKE PULS: A lot of people said we worked really well together on the stage. I think that’s because we communicated very openly from the start and that a lot of it happens via the eyes – agreements without translation. There’s something that’s working very directly between us, regardless of translating it into language or embodying it.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: I think it was also because Verena gave us the space. I’ve had other productions where there was a lot of interruption – and precisely because there was interpreting. But sometimes you just have to be patient. The first time we tried ‘lip-reading’, when Wiebke had “It was never about earphones on and translation as was supposed to such, but about read my lips, was the equal value of an awful moment. I understanding and felt like I was being experiencing.” like a deaf teacher and noticed that Wiebke was getting angry. Poor Wiebke! I wanted to stop immediately! But then I looked over to Verena (laughs) and you gave me a sign to continue.

WIEBKE PULS: I remember that too. It was frustrating and made me angry, but at the same time I knew it was an experience I had to go through.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: If we had interrupted the process, the experience wouldn’t have happened. That left a lasting impression on me.

ENCOUNTERING EACH OTHER AS EQUALS

VERENA REGENSBURGER: At the beginning of rehearsals, we hadn’t yet decided if and in what form we could make the show accessible for a deaf audience. We considered whether an interpreter should interpret the shows. But then we really developed the ambition to solve it with the team we had. It was never about translation as such, but about the equal value of understanding and experiencing – even if the perception and reception is happening via different channels.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: Encountering each other — as equals.

VERENA REGENSBURGER: Do you think the fact that the audience knew that Wiebke is an actress and not a professional interpreter made a difference for them?

KASSANDRA WEDEL: You can see the difference. Yet many deaf people told me they liked Wiebke’s signs – that they had a different quality.

WIEBKE PULS: I never had the impression that I had to perfectly adapt in “Luegen”, but that it was much more about how you made something your own. That’s a quality of what we’re doing there.

TRANSLATION APPROXIMATES A WORLD

KASSANDRA WEDEL: When you, Wiebke, sign what I’m saying, does that feel like a translation or as if you’re saying something in a different language?

WIEBKE PULS: It is a translation. For a few shows, you were changing your lines quite a lot, for example. You stayed with the images, but you changed the order, left things out or expressed it a little differently. I had only learned a certain number of signs. But even when you said something new, I would still try to express it with gestures. I think with goodwill anyone can understand what I’m trying to say. And that’s what it’s about, right? And there are lots of other options apart from signs: your facial expression, the body…

VERENA REGENSBURGER: … the context.

WIEBKE PULS: Even if “Luegen” can be understood by both a deaf and a non-deaf audience to a great extent – through the visualisation, the textualisation of language, sign language – I felt a bit guilty every time because of the music. Deaf members of the audience can watch you as you perform

the text in a dance, they can feel the vibrations from the bass speakers, but they don’t hear the music and the singing.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: Translating music is a huge discussion! It’s difficult. What can you translate? What is interpretation anyway?

WIEBKE PULS: You can translate sense impressions synaesthetically. You can try to make them accessible using the other senses. But then it’s not music anymore, it’s something else.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: I think there is such a thing as “visual sound”, that music doesn’t just have to be acoustic. Even in a translation from English into German you can only approximate terms sometimes.

WIEBKE PULS: I think that languages can bridge this gap, because you can just stretch it further and further, and in the end a whole paragraph stands for one word. But then someone has understood what it is, even if

“When you try to that one word is translate everything, missing. Transyou can destroy lating the senses, something too.” that’s something different in my view. When you talk about “visual sound”, I’m torn in two directions, because I think it’s great that you found this translation, because it lets you participate in the sound and at the same I think, poor Kassandra, she doesn’t see …

KASSANDRA WEDEL: … what you hear.

WIEBKE PULS: No, even worse, everything that’s missing. No matter what the translation achieves, it remains a world that that she can never experience in that way. So I’m torn in two directions between deep respect and great pity.

THE BEAUTY OF SIGN LANGUAGE

WIEBKE PULS: You have an incredible intuition. For example, when we were singing and you put your hand on my chest or back, you understood so much through the vibrations, I thought it was amazing every time.

VERENA REGENSBURGER: Kassandra, you explained it to me like this: for lots of deaf people sign language is their mother tongue and speech is their second language. So like when I learn English. You’re not deaf from birth and you work with different connections between speech and sign language. Which feels more natural to you?

KASSANDRA WEDEL: When I’m either only speaking or only signing. When you do both, it works, but it’s hard. Signs that accompany speech don’t look nice or clean anymore. The sentences are more unclear – you’re left swimming a bit more, you have to search more. If you do both together, it’s like running and singing at the same time. You get out of breath. The languages have a different rhythm. Here we used it as an art form. It blurs, like sound in a hearing aid. We illustrated it visually. At the start, we’re signing clearly (speech accompanying signs) and it gets less and less, fragments (signs accompanying speech). In that way, the comprehensibility gradually reverses for the hearing and deaf audience.

WHEN YOU TRY TO TRANSLATE EVERYTHING, YOU CAN DESTROY SOMETHING TOO.

WIEBKE PULS: In the end, we chose or you chose moments for the stage that are about a distance that needs to be bridged. In rehearsals, we still had a scene called “The Phone Call”, in which we couldn’t hear or see each other – but amazingly still had a conversation, as if telepathically.

KASSANDRA WEDEL: The question was: how can it be translated? The phone call worked because it was improvised in the moment. When you try to translate everything, you can destroy something too.

VERENA REGENSBURGER: You don’t have to understand the show word for word — the opposite. It’s much more important to me that they watch you both.

WIEBKE PULS: The verbal share of information is much less than we actually think. I think that’s pretty magical. What is it that people tell each other alongside all

“What is it that those words? What people tell each other do they absorb alongside all those information from? words?” You can see here that communication goes beyond words. Yet still language is essential – which we talk about in “Luegen” and how we do that.

VERENA REGENSBURGER: The show is already about that in terms of content – we try to translate, namely internal processes or our own ways of perceiving, and want to find out where we really see each other in the process.

WIEBKE PULS: ‘Translation’ describes what we did, without talking about actual translation as it’s generally understood. What we did with “Luegen” is like the literal meaning of the German word for translation ‘übersetzen’, shifting one’s own position, placing oneself on the other side. In that sense I think that term is almost even nicer, namely the experience of sharing a standpoint, changing one’s own position!

VERENA REGENSBURGER is an independent director working in the field of arts and theatre. “Luegen” was her final project as assistant director at the Münchner Kammerspiele. During her Goethe Institute residency in Bangalore (India), she developed the play “My Name Is I Love You” in collaboration with students from the Abhinaya Taranga Theatre Training School.

WIEBKE PULS has been a member of the Münchner Kammerspiele ensemble since 2005. She has received several awards for her work, including the Boy Gobert Prize from the Körber Foundation in 2003 and the Alfred Kerr Actors Award for her role of Kriemhild in “Die Nibelungen” in 2005. At the 55th edition of the Berliner Theatertreffen in 2018, she was honoured with the 3sat Prize for her performance in “Trommeln in der Nacht”.

KASSANDRA WEDEL works as an independent actor, choreographer and dancer. She is a member of the ensemble of Deutsches Gehörlosen Theater and has been German hip hop world champion in solo and duo of the inclusive hip hop championships twice. She performs across Europe with her dance group, Nikita Dance Crew. Besides German and English spoken language, Wedel also speaks German and international sign language.

"HOW DID YOU

COME UP WITH "In theatre, text is only one of the components of a theatre THE IDEA OF production. It only comes alive FOUNDING DRAMA when it is embodied on the stage. This process can be understood PANORAMA E.V. ?" best when as a translator you see yourself as part of the production process.

In our workshops, we have had important discussions about matters specific to our profession, but also political debates (e.g. about author’s rights for translators). Today Drama Panorama is a non-profit association with several teams working para-llel, developing different projects in the area of contemporary drama and its transfer in particular. In a series of the same name, new plays translated into German are published by Neofelis Verlag Berlin."

Dr. Barbora Schnelle is a Theatre Studies scholar, theatre critic and translator of well-known authors into Czech. As a translator and editor, she discovered Jelinek for the Czech Republic. She is also a guest lecturer in Brno and founder of the online theatre journal "Yorick".

FOR ME, TRANSLATION IS AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE DIFFERENCES AUDIBLE

By Leyla-Claire Rabih

Translated by Kate McNaughton

I have been working in both France and Germany for almost 20 years, making theatre and promoting contemporary texts in various ways. In short, I work as a kind of mediator. Having first studied in France, I trained as a director at the Ernst Busch drama school in Berlin, under Manfred Karge. A practical school. A Brechtian school. We learned a ‘grammar of the stage’: theatre does not begin on stage, but rather in the text. Theatre begins with what I see as a director, what I take from the text, assemble out of it or contrast it with, what I interpret into the text – in short, what I see in it and project onto it.

This is how I learned to think about theatre in German. At the time, my knowledge of German was still limited and ‘understanding German’ got mixed up with decrypting events on stage and being able to follow a sequence of scenes. At the end of the 1990s, when I went to see some of Frank Castorf’s stagings for the first time, I was faced with several layers of meaning: many of them performed, others merely spoken, yet others purely visual. My poor language skills at the time sharpened my attention, and my access to the meaning depended on the actor’s performances. The clarity of the language reached me through the clarity of the performance. I have always worked with contemporary texts because I am interested in how authors who are living in the same historical moment as I am, who have been formed by the same complex world as me, write about the world. Due to my Franco-German professional experience, I am almost always put in the position of acting as an intermediary: I know the German theatre system and the French theatre landscape, I direct plays on either side of the Rhine, and have always been confronted with different understandings of the theatre. An audience of French professionals commented my first piece of work as a director with the words: “You’ve got lots of ideas, that’s great, but your actors are a little over the top, don’t you think?” The equivalent German audience said: “You’ve got a few ideas, but why don’t your actors act?” When I direct a play in Germany, the Germans say: “Ah, it’s very French.” When I stage a play in France, the French say: “Well, it’s pretty German.” I have learned to understand these contrasting expectations. While theatre in Germany was mainly about ‘action’, in France it was above all about ‘text’. I have learned to sail without a radar, not to rely so much on the advice of experts who pronounce on what is right and what is wrong, but rather to trust the audience’s attention. For me, staging a play also always means translating. I have to communicate my understanding of the text to my actors, so that they can make it their own and invent it anew for the stage, as if it were a musical score. For me, staging a play means communicating a text, enabling it to get ‘across’, so that another audience can receive its contents on an emotional level. Alongside my work as director, I increasingly find myself working as a translator,

and, together with Frank Weigand, as editor of the “SCÈNE – New French Theatre Plays” series, which has been published since 1999, initially under the editorship of Barbara Engelhardt. Translating theatre plays without staging them myself has become second nature to me. Often the first question that comes up is the level of transposition the text or story needs to undergo, and then, what connections are important for the spectators.

This is one of the essential themes of the work that Frank Weigand and I do when we edit the “SCÈNE – New French Theatre Plays” series. A host of questions come up when we select the manuscripts: can a text simply be ‘transferred’ to a German stage, in spite of its French nature? Or indeed must it be transferred precisely because of its French nature? Which individual will manage to come up with a contemporary translation of its contents? Which words will they choose? We also regularly translate together, and this is where our differences and divergences complement each other most strongly: a French director and a German translator. Instead of relocating the story or ‘Germanising’ the names of its characters, we focus on explaining the meaning of key elements so that readers and spectators can imagine the original situation. An interesting connection arises out of this separation. After reading our translation of Fabrice Melquiot’s “Les Séparables” (The Separables), for example, young people often ask us: “It’s not set here, is it?” and “But why do they talk about Arabs so much?”, but they completely understand the problems of discrimination and equal treatment that are explored by the text. I was faced with quite a different situation when I worked on some translations of texts by the Syrian author Mohammad Al Attar out of the Arabic into French, together with Jumana Al-Yasiri. The three texts we translated were all written at the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, between 2011 and 2014. They portray characters who were trapped by events and cons- tantly tried to cope with them and to reflect on political questions. The plays mostly portrayed scenes from daily life, which were characterised by everyday speech. Here, the challenge of translation was quite different. It was difficult to translate the matter of course way in which the characters formulated political reflections or questions in their everyday speech into a French everyday linguistic register. Sometimes it was necessary to contextualise specific things in the French text, sometimes we had to take the liberty of using a circumlocution in order to explain what would have been obvious in a Syrian context. We continued making such adaptations during the rehearsal process, together with the actors. Some sentences were rephrased several times, in order to keep the everyday tone of the discussion. Translating and mediating necessarily means risking misunderstandings and friction. Ten years ago, I adapted “Casimir and Caroline” by Ödon von Horvath in France. This play is still viewed there as telling the story of the rise of National Socialism, while my adaptation took the economic crisis as its central theme: the search for private solutions shortly before poverty becomes too overwhelming and the people affected start to believe in a particular political solution and to reach for their ballot papers. This interpretation provoked a controversy; my adaptation and staging were largely criticised by French theatre professionals. The stage design, costumes and acting were viewed as caricatures, which did not do justice to a personal view of the text. My only consolation as translator came from the comments made by German dramaturges, who admittedly did not particularly like my staging either (too French!), but who admired the text: they could hear, in my French adaptation, the laconic and lapidary discussions between Horvath’s characters. This was a real compliment for me and confirmation that my attempts had not been in vain. Due to my ‘Brechtian’ training, the terms ‘situation’ and ‘conflict’ are part of my personal concept of what theatre is. I find a text particularly interesting when it varies between drama

tic situations and narrative. It is an established stylistic device in contemporary drama and theatre work when for example characters come out of their scenic dialogue and address the audience directly. This kind of 'stepping out' and commenting places them at a distance from the situation, and creates moments of world creation and of self-discovery for the characters. Perhaps we are dealing here with an attempt to invent the world anew. At a time “… theatre does not where fiction is begin on stage, but massively conrather in the text.” sumed in image form, languagebased narrative can produce a different effect. Theatre’s aim is thus not to make the audience dive into fiction – rather, it attempts to avoid precisely such an effect. A theatrical text allows the word to be heard collectively and its translation is an extension of this collective effect. For me, translation does not mean adjustment in the sense of harmonisation, nor the delivery of something that is ‘ready to understand’. Much the opposite, in fact: translation for me is an attempt to make differences audible, without avoiding any areas of confusion or misunderstandings. For me it is about building bridges between realities and not doing the same things on both sides. It is about measuring the gaps between our perceptions, which are different – depending on the places and moments of the body – based on the basic features of the Feldenkrais method, which strives for a simpler organisation of movements through awareness. This means viewing the languages and the societies that separate and connect them as one single, living organism.

LEYLA-CLAIRE RABIH works as an independent director and translator in France and Germany. She is the artistic director of Dijon-based company Grenier Neuf, translates from German to French – and the other way around – and is co-editor of theatre anthology "SCÈNE – Neue französische Theaterstücke" together with translator Frank Weigand.

"HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF „Das Übersetzen für die Bühne ist ein komplexer Prozess, der mit vielen Fragen beginnt: Für welche Bühnensituati"Translating for the stage is a complex process that begins with lots of questions: which stage INITIATING GETTING ACROZZ WITH THOMAS on übersetze ich? Welche Übertragungsform wäre am besten geeignet und was bedeutet das für meine Übersetzung? Wenn Sprachübertragung unzureichend mitgedacht und umgesetzt wird, führt das, situation am I translating for? Which form of language transfer is best suited and what does that mean for my translation? When KRAUS?" gerade bei internationalen Festivals, meist zu Unruhe und Frust auf allen Seiten: bei language transfer is not considered or implemented properly, it usually den Macher:innen ebenso wie im Publikum. causes agitation and frustration Mit Getting Acrozz konnten wir dieses Thema erstmals zu einem zentralen Teil des Festivals machen. Wir entwickelten für jede Produktion – in enger Ab on all sides, especially at international festivals: the theatremakers just as much as the audience. Getting Acrozz was sprache mit den Künstler:innen – die (hoffentlich) the first time we could make this issue a central part of the am besten geeignete Übertragungsform, kümmerfestival. For every production, we developed – communicating ten uns um Übersetzungen und Qualitätskontrolclosely with the artists – the (hopefully) most suited form of le und unterstützten die Kommunikation während des Festivals, zur Not auch spät abends an der Bar. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass seitdem viele Beteiliglanguage transfer, looked after the translations and quality control, and supported communication during the festival, te anders über die sprachliche Übertragung ihif necessary also late at night at the bar. I have the feeling rer Produktionen nachdenken – weil sie gemerkt that since then, many people involved think about language haben, wie sehr die Kommunikation mit dem Putransfer in their productions in a different way – because blikum davon beeinflusst wird und welche neuen Wege sich dadurch öffnen können.“ they realised how much communication with the audience is influenced by that and how new opportunities can open up as a result. "

Karen Witthuhn is a translator and was the initiator of the translation programme Getting Acrozz as part of the PAZZ Performing Arts Festival in 2012 in Oldenburg. After studying in Bristol, she worked as a director, dramaturge, production manager and translator and is a member of the translation bureau Transfiction.