I find the recent brouhaha over the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s "Play On! 36 Playwrights Translate Shakespeare" project very, very interesting. First I will say that I have no major objection to translating Shakespeare into modern English... in theory, nor do I judge a single playwright who has taken on the awesome responsibility of translating one of these plays. I’m sure that all of the writers feel it was an honor to be asked, and I’m also sure they feel the weight of the responsibility and the history on their shoulders...a weight that can only have been made more onerous by the arguing, clamoring, outrage, and general internet noise about it these past few days.
The announcement of this project seems to have divided theatre people into two loose camps: those who believe that Shakespeare should be preserved, that language is sacred, that plays are a snapshot of time and place; and those who believe that theatre is a living, breathing, evolving entity and want it to survive. Preservationists versus survivalists.
My research is showing that nothing is doing more to kill the American theatre than Shakespeare. Not because he’s over-produced (he is), or bad (he’s brilliant), but because he’s the only playwright that most Americans are ever exposed to. I’ve been doing a study of which plays high students are being taught across the US and I will tell you that it is mostly Shakespeare and they mostly hate it. Because school is the only place that the majority of Americans are exposed to plays, and because they are being taught plays that they find inaccessible, they are learning to dislike an entire art form and they’re learning it early. Most Americans literally have no idea that there are living, breathing humans (some of them women! some of them not-white!) who are writing plays right now that are comprehensible to anyone who might walk off the street and buy a ticket. Not only have they never been exposed to new plays, they don’t know they exist. They think of theatre as crusty, old, and designed to make them feel stupid. (Incidently, some of the students I’ve surveyed listed Beowulf as a play because the only plays they’ve read are written in meter. Why wouldn’t they, in those circumstances, think that Beowulf was a play?)
We have to remember that theatre is not like music or fiction. There’s no radio or library through which it can be experienced at no cost. High schoolers aren’t quoting Suzan-Lori Parks in the hallways of their schools the way they quote hip hop artists. They’re not reading Stephen Adly Guirgis plays with a flashlight under their covers at night like they were the latest installment of the Hunger Games. But if they knew about Parks and Guirgis, I think some of them would. We have classical music and popular music, classic fiction and popular fiction. Right or wrong, the popular stuff is consumed by the people at much higher rates than the classics. The public knows about classical theatre, but most of them don’t know about “popular” modern theatre. Imagine if they knew.
But back to Shakespeare since he’s why so many have their panties in a knot right now. Survey results show that the students’ reasons for not liking Shakespeare are unsurprising:
“i was not crazy about romeo and juliet due to the fact it was written in old english and kind of hard to understand.”
“the dialogue was hard to comprehend”
“Shakespeare plays, they are not from our time and difficult to follow/understand”
Comments like these say to me that Oregon Shakespeare Festival is making a smart move if the translations actually make it into a classroom. My guess is that many of the plays may be deemed unsuitable for the classroom once they’re modernized, in which case they will not solve the problem of Shakespeare killing the theatre. (I know, it sounds so dramatic and crazy, but imagine a world in which Beethoven was the only composer kids were ever introduced to and think about what the music industry would look like.) Will theaters that present productions of Shakespeare to thousands of high school students every year produce these translations instead? Maybe some of them. I’m curious to find out.
Right now it’s impossible to say if the finished products by these playwrights will be true translations or adaptations. I can’t imagine that any woman (and probably many of the men) working on this project won’t feel compelled to make some of the male characters female. Will some authors be race-specific? How much leeway do they have? Regardless I’m sure there will be a range. My issue with the project is that I predict that it will lead, at least in the short term, to more productions of Shakespeare than ever before – both the originals and the translations — and this will inevitably mean fewer slots for actual new plays. There will be the theaters that excitedly produce these translations putting money in the pockets of living writers (yay), and then there will be the purists who, in a backlash, will produce more original Shakespeare than ever, lest we forget how important he is, how beautiful his language, how perfect the meter. As a result more new plays than usual will take a backseat to this battle of the bards.
Worse than that, I suspect that many theaters, when planning their seasons will say, “Hey, look, we’ve already got a woman of color translating the Tempest, no need to do another new play by a woman of color, we can check off that box.” The translations will count as new plays when they are not new plays and those writers will count in the tallies of under-represented voices. But whose voice will they be actually representing? They’re own? Shakespeare’s? The answer is probably both.
I was asked on Facebook today, “What is it we value about new plays that is not being ‘served’ by this project?” It’s a good question which prompts another question: what do we value in new plays? I value a new voice, a new perspective, and an examination of the world we live in now and its current dilemmas. Some themes and issues are universal and we’ve been writing plays about them over and over for centuries. But there are a lot of topics — race, feminism, gender, and sexuality among them — that have been taboo (or simply ignored) for centuries, that are still taboo in parts of the world, and those stories have not gotten the same amount of stage time as the classics. The plays and the voices that open up my understanding of the world I live in — be it the world at large or my inner world — that’s what excites me about theatre. Will these “translations” do that?
Some of them may. I don’t know. What I do know is that they will all be created based on building blocks set-up by a long-dead white man. Whatever exciting new voices and perspectives are being employed, they will be filtered and probably constrained by the themes, plots, and structure of William Shakespeare. There’s a challenge in that, and I criticize no one for taking it on, but it is not the same as if one of these artists were being paid to tell any story they wanted to tell.
For me, in the end, it’s a question of resources and how they’re being used. These OSF commissions are being used to pay living artists, but they are also being used to keep Shakespeare alive — not the American theatre, but Shakespeare who, by my accounting, is doing quite well for himself already.
I’m not criticizing Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They are using their money to support their mission, but if we really want to support playwrights, we would pay them to write their own stories, and if we really want to save the American theatre we would figure out a way to get those stories into the “hands” of the American teenager.
The announcement of this project seems to have divided theatre people into two loose camps: those who believe that Shakespeare should be preserved, that language is sacred, that plays are a snapshot of time and place; and those who believe that theatre is a living, breathing, evolving entity and want it to survive. Preservationists versus survivalists.
My research is showing that nothing is doing more to kill the American theatre than Shakespeare. Not because he’s over-produced (he is), or bad (he’s brilliant), but because he’s the only playwright that most Americans are ever exposed to. I’ve been doing a study of which plays high students are being taught across the US and I will tell you that it is mostly Shakespeare and they mostly hate it. Because school is the only place that the majority of Americans are exposed to plays, and because they are being taught plays that they find inaccessible, they are learning to dislike an entire art form and they’re learning it early. Most Americans literally have no idea that there are living, breathing humans (some of them women! some of them not-white!) who are writing plays right now that are comprehensible to anyone who might walk off the street and buy a ticket. Not only have they never been exposed to new plays, they don’t know they exist. They think of theatre as crusty, old, and designed to make them feel stupid. (Incidently, some of the students I’ve surveyed listed Beowulf as a play because the only plays they’ve read are written in meter. Why wouldn’t they, in those circumstances, think that Beowulf was a play?)
We have to remember that theatre is not like music or fiction. There’s no radio or library through which it can be experienced at no cost. High schoolers aren’t quoting Suzan-Lori Parks in the hallways of their schools the way they quote hip hop artists. They’re not reading Stephen Adly Guirgis plays with a flashlight under their covers at night like they were the latest installment of the Hunger Games. But if they knew about Parks and Guirgis, I think some of them would. We have classical music and popular music, classic fiction and popular fiction. Right or wrong, the popular stuff is consumed by the people at much higher rates than the classics. The public knows about classical theatre, but most of them don’t know about “popular” modern theatre. Imagine if they knew.
But back to Shakespeare since he’s why so many have their panties in a knot right now. Survey results show that the students’ reasons for not liking Shakespeare are unsurprising:
“i was not crazy about romeo and juliet due to the fact it was written in old english and kind of hard to understand.”
“the dialogue was hard to comprehend”
“Shakespeare plays, they are not from our time and difficult to follow/understand”
Comments like these say to me that Oregon Shakespeare Festival is making a smart move if the translations actually make it into a classroom. My guess is that many of the plays may be deemed unsuitable for the classroom once they’re modernized, in which case they will not solve the problem of Shakespeare killing the theatre. (I know, it sounds so dramatic and crazy, but imagine a world in which Beethoven was the only composer kids were ever introduced to and think about what the music industry would look like.) Will theaters that present productions of Shakespeare to thousands of high school students every year produce these translations instead? Maybe some of them. I’m curious to find out.
Right now it’s impossible to say if the finished products by these playwrights will be true translations or adaptations. I can’t imagine that any woman (and probably many of the men) working on this project won’t feel compelled to make some of the male characters female. Will some authors be race-specific? How much leeway do they have? Regardless I’m sure there will be a range. My issue with the project is that I predict that it will lead, at least in the short term, to more productions of Shakespeare than ever before – both the originals and the translations — and this will inevitably mean fewer slots for actual new plays. There will be the theaters that excitedly produce these translations putting money in the pockets of living writers (yay), and then there will be the purists who, in a backlash, will produce more original Shakespeare than ever, lest we forget how important he is, how beautiful his language, how perfect the meter. As a result more new plays than usual will take a backseat to this battle of the bards.
Worse than that, I suspect that many theaters, when planning their seasons will say, “Hey, look, we’ve already got a woman of color translating the Tempest, no need to do another new play by a woman of color, we can check off that box.” The translations will count as new plays when they are not new plays and those writers will count in the tallies of under-represented voices. But whose voice will they be actually representing? They’re own? Shakespeare’s? The answer is probably both.
I was asked on Facebook today, “What is it we value about new plays that is not being ‘served’ by this project?” It’s a good question which prompts another question: what do we value in new plays? I value a new voice, a new perspective, and an examination of the world we live in now and its current dilemmas. Some themes and issues are universal and we’ve been writing plays about them over and over for centuries. But there are a lot of topics — race, feminism, gender, and sexuality among them — that have been taboo (or simply ignored) for centuries, that are still taboo in parts of the world, and those stories have not gotten the same amount of stage time as the classics. The plays and the voices that open up my understanding of the world I live in — be it the world at large or my inner world — that’s what excites me about theatre. Will these “translations” do that?
Some of them may. I don’t know. What I do know is that they will all be created based on building blocks set-up by a long-dead white man. Whatever exciting new voices and perspectives are being employed, they will be filtered and probably constrained by the themes, plots, and structure of William Shakespeare. There’s a challenge in that, and I criticize no one for taking it on, but it is not the same as if one of these artists were being paid to tell any story they wanted to tell.
For me, in the end, it’s a question of resources and how they’re being used. These OSF commissions are being used to pay living artists, but they are also being used to keep Shakespeare alive — not the American theatre, but Shakespeare who, by my accounting, is doing quite well for himself already.
I’m not criticizing Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They are using their money to support their mission, but if we really want to support playwrights, we would pay them to write their own stories, and if we really want to save the American theatre we would figure out a way to get those stories into the “hands” of the American teenager.
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