This consciousness surrounding representation was pervasive throughout the festival, starting with the Women in/and Caribbean Theatre panel, and was reflected in several questions during talkbacks about playwrights’ casting specifications and the varying receptions of the plays presented, depending on where they were staged. Candace Thompson-Zachery, the festival’s external artistic director, raised the notion of “legibility,” especially for work that’s non-Eurocentric, as a recurring conversation in her circles. She reported constantly having to respond to questions along the lines of, “Is your project to make your work legible to ‘mainstream’ audiences?” And, “Do you make work that you feel will translate well to a broader audience, or do you make work specifically for Caribbean audiences to engage with?”
Several playwrights expressed frustration in trying to garner French support for productions of their work, often being pigeonholed by their Caribbean identity.
Works in translation beg the question: “For whom are we telling these stories?” Some playwrights, such as Francisque, were vocal about their intent to fill the silence and to capture and transmit their culture’s folklore, including the story of the “she-devil” recounted in her play. Solignat spoke about her experience as an actor playing a négropolitaine (a negatively connotated word for a Black person born in mainland France) who is viewed with a certain disdain when they visit France’s overseas territories. Several playwrights expressed frustration in trying to garner French support for productions of their work, often being pigeonholed by their Caribbean identity.
The plays themselves ranged from the deeply intimate to the epic and folkloric. Trottoir chagrin/Street Sad told the “impossible love story” of a prostitute and a stalker, and L’Adoration/Adoration chronicled an obsessive love affair. Une vie familiale/Family peeled back the layers of secrecy and deception in a seemingly “normal” nuclear family, and Le jour où mon père m’a tué/The Day My Father Killed Me told the true story of a Guadeloupian radio DJ who murdered his son on the eve of his son’s eighteenth birthday. De toute la terre le grand effarement/And the Whole World Quakes presented a Godot-esque post-apocalyptic take on the aftermath of Haiti’s 2008 earthquake, and Ladjable/She-Devil spun a contemporary take on a traditional folk tale about a mythic seductress. Every play was laced with social commentary and violence, laying bare the playwrights’ grappling with pressing questions of identity, alterity, and belonging.
It does not feel like an exaggeration to say most of what I’ve learned about the world, I’ve learned through stories. What’s more, translation has strengthened my ability to constantly hold two (or more) simultaneous, differing realities in my head. As ardently as the playwrights and other Caribbean artists assembled at the Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales Festival wanted to dispel the white colonialist myth of their home as nothing more than beaches and good times, they also wanted to share the specificity of their experience and cultural context, as well as their families, traditions, language, music, and stories. Plays such as the ones presented in the Caribbean Theatre Project allow artists and audiences alike to share in the messy, collaborative, perfectly imperfect exercise of broadening our perspectives and listening for understanding, in languages both familiar and foreign.
****
N’importe quel traducteur digne de ce nom pourrait vous dire que le vrai travail de la traduction, ce n’est pas la traduction (rigoureuse) au sens littéral, mais la traduction culturelle nécessaire à porter la signification de l’ouvrage. Ce défi est d’autant plus évident quand il s’agit d’un texte dramatique, demandant au traducteur de devenir non seulement dramaturge (au sens anglais du terme) pour le texte, mais aussi, souvent, défenseur dévoué et interprète du dramaturge (au sens français du terme) –, un devoir qui devient hautement politique quand les dramaturges font partie d’une communauté marginalisée.
Cette relation sacrée, entre le traducteur et le dramaturge, a été vaillamment mise en valeur en décembre dernier, quand le Martin E. Segal Theatre Center à New York a accueilli des francophones, des francophiles et des gens de théâtre de partout dans le monde pour assister aux lectures publiques de six pièces franco-caribéennes traduites en anglais, et pour discuter de l’importance des échanges internationaux au théâtre. Tout cela faisait partie du premier festival Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales (ACT), coorganisé par Stéphanie Bérard et Frank Hentschker. Créer un espace pour les histoires franco-caribéennes, radicalement sous-représentées dans la diffusion de la culture française à cause du colonialisme et de la suprématie blanche – malgré la relation historique importante entre ces territoires géographiques –, était central dans la mission du Festival.
Comments
The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here
Interesting read! Both beautifully expressed and culturally stimulating. Any idea on where I can access the English translation for the 'Le jour où mon père m’a tué'?
Also, thanks for sharing Amelia.
Thank you for reading and for your response, Sumaya! The English language translation will be available in a forthcoming anthology published by CUNY's Segal Center later this year or in early 2021.