Transcending Language: Navigating the Danish Theatre Festival without Knowing Danish
JUNE 12, 2009Transcending Language: Navigating the Danish Theatre Festival without Knowing Danish
By Lenora Inez Brown
Every April the entire Danish TYA community converges upon one suburban town and presents over 500 performances of plays for infants, children and teens. The Danish Theatre Festival, organized and presented by Teatercentrum, an organization under the Ministry of Culture, provides thousands of young people and their families a chance to experience live theatre, and Danish artists an opportunity to showcase their work to teachers and international presenters. It’s a busy week for everyone.
In addition, if you attend as an International guest, everything except the schedule is written or performed in Danish. Now, this could be daunting, but one quickly realizes a map is a map and a great play is great in any language. To use the map well, one relies on basic knowledge of cardinal points and landmarks; to enjoy a play in a foreign language trust your instincts and look to the audience to follow their emotional connection or lack thereof.
If attending theatre performed in a foreign language concerns you, rest assured the strengths of a strong play or production transcend language, and watching the audience's responses can be as wonderful as the performance itself, sometimes even more revealing. Certainly, complex arguments and linguistic nuance may elude a non-native speaker, but a good story's overall emotional arc works in spite of language. Some of the best work I saw was performed fully in Danish, and most of the companies interested in touring provided a brief summary in English. If a summary was not available, most presenters were more than willing to describe the play in English. And making the effort to meet the presenters often provided extra insights as well.
My week began with a wonderful piece for pre-school children THE CAMEL CAME LAST. As I watched this gentle and humorous creation story based on Jesper Wung-Sung's book, I marveled at how focused the children were on the story and how willing they were to help name the world. As the workman discovered light, the children repeated "lys" (which sounds like lux); for the seas, "havet" (which sounds like hov); and for sky, "himmel." Following the story included learning a bit of Danish and with that realization came a great sense of confidence: I would be able to appreciate the work even if I missed a few words..
My ability to appreciate strong acting, design and clarity of story were unaffected by my non-existent Danish. Even complex stories like Theatre Fair Play's SARAH written by Michael Ramløse (literally translated as Our Idea of Sarah) which challenged my language skills, managed to draw me in as I used the performances to follow the scenes and observe the silent, enrapt audience, mostly pre-teen girls. I knew this play spoke to them, and I surmised through the acting and audience response that the bullying/social ostracism presented hit a bit too close to home for some.
There were pieces that were not easy to follow, and initially I thought language would have helped. However, when the audience began to repeatedly shift noisily or clap in hopes of ending the performance, I felt confident in declaring the production a dud. Later in the week, native speakers confirmed my confusion and affirmed my belief that yes, language helps but it isn't the only way to appreciate theatre.
One of the strongest productions, OPSANG, produced by Theatre Baggård and Mungo Park Allerød, used songs, raps and prose to chronicle the seven deadly sins from a teen’s perspective. The kids loved it; the adults loved it; and the foreigners who didn't understand Danish loved it. Yes, delaying the discovery that the slothful character (think Silent Bob's sidekick Jay from Clerks) drowns after falling asleep on the toilet or that the song of the young girl representing gluttony ends with her as a vegetable after one hit of cocaine can be difficult, but discovering a production worth supporting with a translation or presenting outweighs the minor inconvenience.
Throughout the week, the conversation with the creators became the second most exciting aspect of the festival, for there new friendships were born. Discovering the nuances of these other top productions were also performed in Danish, although two were presented in English and one in French, also proved valuable, especially when the conversations focused on how to best translate the play into English.
Me You and Us ((Åben Dans-Egnsteater I Roskilde): nominated for the Reumert Prize award, Denmark’s top honor for TYA (The prize went to Corona La Balance’s The Story of a Mother. The company was featured at this year's IPAY conference in Cleveland). A dance piece with limited language for those 0-4. If you have never seen a one-year-old laugh with delight and look around with a facial expression, "Are you seeing this? Isn’t this amazing?" bring this piece in and watch the children. It’s a delightful dance piece about discovering the world through the senses.
The Little House (Team Theatre): a delightful story about a young girl on summer holiday with her grandparents. Things go missing in the night, and the little girl must confront the ghostly spirit who moves things around and turns the world blue. Although the story is simple, the performance was a delight.
Oskar (Theatre Møllen): The story of a young boy trying to solve a riddle to help him reconnect with and mourn his father who died in the WTC attacks on 9/11. An unsentimental story of death, reconciliation, and the resiliency of spirit.
Fucking Alone (Graense-Loes) (This show was renamed Control/Delete when it was toured to China): A powerful and disturbing look at how isolating online communication and communities can be. This art-filled production uses technology well, so much so it appears more like an art installation/performance piece for all ages than a teen-focused drama.
The runners-up are Lava, a Soil Investigation by the Dutch company Studio Orka and Bandiougou the Last, the result of the Danish/Mali collaboration directed by Jacques Matthiessen. Lava, performed in English, is an energetic site-specific play about exploring new worlds under the earth.
The Mali performance was enthusiastic, lively, humorous and so clear 7 and 8 year old boys stopped playing soccer to sit and watch this 60 + minute play performed in French. Reminding us that children like anything as long as its fun and well executed...language, that’s a barrier only adults acknowledge.
Lenora Inez Brown is the President of TYA/USA and the Head of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at DePaul University.