#ExchangeTheatre

[davidfurlongtheatre]

David Furlong interview: The Doctor In Spite Of Himself,  Le médecin malgré lui

This interview was published on This Week London by Caro Moses in June 2016, in English. Below is also a copy translated in French.

By Caro Moses | Published on Tuesday 21 June 2016 on http://thisweeklondon.com/article/david-furlong-the-doctor-in-spite-of-himself/ 

CM: What happens in ‘The Doctor In Spite Of Himself’ – what’s the story? DF: It’s about Sganarelle, a merry but drunken woodcutter, who beats his wife one day, and in return she spreads the word that he is actually a brilliant doctor who can only work when he is beaten. After a stream of beatings, he’s taken by force to tend to a dysfunctional family where silence rules over emotions. His arrival leads to a farcical roller-coaster of adultery and comedy.

This play is the mother of French farces, and I think it’s also the story of Moliere writing a comedy ‘in spite of himself’. He wrote the play after his much deeper works for the King’s court, such as ‘Dom Juan’ or ‘Le Misanthrope’ – for which he got trashed by false critics – and returned to the farcical genre he employed when he first began, when he was touring France for ten years, from village to village, performing on trestles.

But he does it in a very clever way, breaking the fourth wall and speaking about his own creation with a very critical view on the ‘upstarts’ from his time. So our production also explores this sub-story within the story. It’s quite amazing, it’s almost like a Spike Jonze movie!

CM: It’s a new adaptation of the play, of course – how close is the adaptation to the original piece in its events and themes? DF: The vocation of the company is to translate the language of the play, of course, but also its spirit. So even if our production is very modern, and uses a contemporary imagery more suited to a 2016 audience, it’s mostly true to Moliere’s ideas: we did explore more deeply some themes that are already in the play, and could not be ignored in 2016, like the violence or the forced marriage.

It’s generally very true to the original in terms of the script itself, though we devised some scenes in order to tell some of the untold sub-plots, by doing a lot of development work on the characters with the cast (which made the process fantastic). And as we’re producing the original play in French, alternating with the English run, the two productions are exact mirror images.

CM: Who has translated the piece? Is it a one-person job? Over the ten years we’ve been translating French plays to English, we’ve experimented with several different approaches: we worked with a university professor on our Claudel piece, I updated an old translation for Sartre’s ‘The Flies’, we’ve workshopped the play with actors for a more contemporary writer, and we also sometimes found an original translation that worked perfectly.

For this project, as it was our first great classic, I didn’t plan to come up with my own translation, as I was sure that the work had been done brilliantly in the past. But as I was looking into previous ones, there was always something slightly wrong for our version: one would be too outdated for a modern audience, the other too literal, with French turn of phrases which don’t work in English; another one would be too much of a departure from the original, and one last one was too American for London.

As I have an important body of translations behind me now, I decided I would be able to come up with a version that combines the best ideas of previous translators with the elements of my own contemporary vision for the play. Having done this, I then re-worked it with the actors in rehearsal. Our company is comprised entirely of fully-bilingual people, some of them Franco-British, so when we had doubts about a line, we always looked back to Moliere’s original words. Any language has echoes and nuances, so it’s important to have a team that really understands both cultures intimately.

CM: It’s not one of the French playwright’s most performed plays, is it? Why do you think that is? DF: ‘Le Medecin Malgre Lui’ was one of Moliere’s greatest success, and is still studied by all thirteen year olds in French classrooms. But for obvious educative reasons, all the triviality is avoided and the sexual innuendos – the trashy bits – are not talked about, so in the national collective consciousness it occupies a bit of a boring place. Even I had my doubts when the play was first commissioned for the French Lycee… But then I discovered Molière wrote it with a very modern insolence.

I think that in all cultures, there is a misconception about classics being dusty and simply too old. And it’s already so much work keeping up people’s interest in the likes of Shakespeare, though The RSC, the NT, the Globe, and many touring companies are doing an amazing job at this. This means there’s little room for foreign writers, even the greatest ones. So we end up having only a handful of Moliere plays put on because they got a bit famous (just like we only get two Calderon plays and two Goldoni plays).

Even in France, people can be put off by Moliere’s so-called classicism. But it’s worth noting that French theatre makes more room for foreign authors than British Theatre does. Whilst in training at the French National Theatre, I got to work on Shakespeare as a natural part of the curriculum, I got to see Cheek by Jowl reinvigorating these classics internationally, even the least performed plays from the Bard. No one does this for Moliere. A play dies when it’s not performed, so as long as we’re doing it, we’re keeping it alive.

CM: Can you tell us about Exchange Theatre? How did the company come into being, and what are its aims? DF: Remember what I was saying earlier about the lack of translations? The company originated from this idea that there was a gap to fill in the UK scene.  As aforementioned, the work of Moliere and many other major French writers are rarely produced in Britain, whereas in France, we get a lot of plays from across the channel. We felt we could make this work this the other way too.

It began as a ‘side’ to our personal acting careers but it now represents most of it. We’ve translated Claudel, Sartre, and Durringer (the ‘French Ravenhill’ – whose play we even took off-broadway in 2011). Along the way, we also found our own theatrical languages, we explored non western approaches to performing, site-specific works, multilingualism, and I also wrote twelve bilingual shows for a Young Audience season at the Institut Francais.

We settled in London Bridge five years ago, also building a local network within our council, and we are pleased to have a rehearsal space just off Bermondsey Street at the foot of Tower Bridge. Not bad for aliens! We’re very much an international company based in London now, in the footsteps of the artists you’ll see at the Barbican.

TRADUCTION FRANCAISE

David Furlong: Le Médecin malgré Lui  By Caro Moses

Publiée le 21 Juin 2016 sur http://thisweeklondon.com/article/david-furlong-the-doctor-in-spite-of-himself/

CM: Que raconte ‘Le médecin malgré lui’ ?

DF: C'est l'histoire de Sganarelle, un joyeux ivrogne qui bat sa femme, et en retour, elle fait croire qu'il est un grand médecin qui n'accepte de travailler qu'apres avoir été battu. Apres une flopée de coups, il est amené de force dans une famille disfonctionnelles ou le silence prévaut sur les sentiments. Son arrivée déclenche une série comiques d'evenements farcesques melants adultere et autres tromperies.

 Cette piece est la mere des farces Francaises et je pense qu'elle représente aussi Moliere écrivant une farce 'malgré lui'. Il la crée apres des travaux bien plus profonds pour la cour dur Roi, comme ‘Dom Juan’ ou ‘Le Misanthrope’ pour lesquels il subit la foudre des faux critiques auto-déclarés qu'il déteste. Il revient alors au style de la farce qui avait fait le succes de ses débuts quand il tournait en France de villages en villages, jouant sur des tréteaux.

Mais il le fait de facon tres fine, brisant le quatrieme mur et traitant de sa propre création, tout en posant un regard tres critique sur les 'parvenus' de son temps. Notre version explore cette sous-histoire. C'est passionant, presque comme une mise en abyme chez les Frere Coen dans le cinéma d'aujourd'hui ! 

 CM: C'est, pour la version anglaise, une adaptation de la piece – A quel point est-elle fidele a la piece originale dans ses themes et ses evenements?

DF: La vocation de la compagnie est de traduire fidelement la langue, évidemment mais aussi l'esprit qui habite la piece. Et meme si notre production est tres contemporaine et refere a une imagerie d'aujourd'hui, elle est surtout fidele aux idées de Moliere. Nous avons aussi approfondi certains themes déja présents dans la piece et qu'on ne pouvait pas ignorer en 2016 comme la violence ou le mariage forcé.

 C'est principalement tres fidele a l'original en ce qui concerne le texte lui-meme, on n'y touche pas, mais nous créons néanmoins de nouvelles scenes pour raconter des sous-histoires, ou en dévellopant en profondeur le travail sur la vie des personnages avec la distribution (ce qui rend le processus de création fantastique). Et comme nous produisons la piece originale en Francais en alternance avec la production en anglais, les deux pieces sont deux répliques exactes.

CM: Qui a traduit la piece? Est-ce un travail solitaire ? 

En dix ans de compagnie, a traduire des pieces Francaises en Anglais, nous avons expérimenté plusieurs approches différentes: on a travaillé avec une universiatire Américaine sur notre Claudel, j'ai utilisé une vieille traduction sur Les Mouches de Sartre, on a travaillé collectivement avec les acteurs sur un auteur plus contemporain et il nous est arrivé de trouver la traduction originale parfaite.

Pour ce projet, puisque c'était notre premier classique, je ne prévoyais pas de devoir produire ma propre traduction car j'étais certain que le travail avait déja été fait brillamment avant. Mais en lisant les précédentes, il y avait toujours quelque-chose de légerement innaproprié pour notre version a venir: l'une était trop datée pour un public d'aujourd'hui, l'autre trop littérale avec des tournures de phrases a la francaise qui ne fonctionnent pas en anglais, une autre encore prenait trop de libertés avec l'originale, et enfin la derniere était trop américaine pour Londres.

Comme je commence a avoir un baggage important de traduction derriere moi, j'ai alors décidé d'en faire une version ultime qui combine les meilleures idées des traducteurs précédents, et les éléments de ma propre vision contemporaine de la piece. Une fois terminée je l'ai retravaillée avec les comédiens en répétitions. Notre compagnie se compose entierement d'acteurs completement bilingues, certains Anglo-Francais, donc si nous doutions d'une réplique, nous revenions toujours au sens original de la phrase de Moliere. Chaque langue a ses propres échos et ses propres nuances culturelles, donc il est esssentiel pour nous d'avoir une équipe qui comprend vraiment intimement les deux cultures.

CM: Ce n'est pas l'une des pieces les plus jouées de l'auteur, n'est-ce pas ? Pourquoi cela selon vous ?

DF: ‘Le Medecin Malgre Lui’ a été l'un des plus grands succes de Moliere de son vivant, et elle est toujours étudiée par les éleves de college. Mais pour des raisons éducatives évidentes, toute sa trivialité est évitée et on ne s'attarde pas sur les sous-entendus sexuels et les moments un peu trash. Donc dans l'inconscient collectif, elle occupe un peu une place ennuyeuse... Meme moi, j'avais mes doutes quand la piece nous a été commandée par le lycée Francais... C'est alors que j'ai découvert a quel point Moliere avait écrit une piece pleine d'une insolence tres moderne.

Je crois que finalement, c'est dans toutes les cultures qu'il y a un malentendu au sujet des classiques comme étant poussiéreux et trop vieux. Et, ici, c'est déja tant de travail de prolonger l'intéret du public pour les classiques anglais et pour Shakespeare, grace a la RSC, le National, le Globe, et de nombreuses compagnies itinérantes qui sont déja si douées a faire ce travail. Cela fait qu'il reste peu de places pour les auteurs étranger, si grands soient-ils. Donc nous nous retrouvons avec une toute petite poignée de pieces de Moliere produites parce qu'elles sont un peu célebres (comme on voit d'ailleurs seulement une ou deux pieces par Calderon plays ou Goldoni).

Meme en France, les gens peuvent etre rebuté par le soi-disant classicisme de Moliere’s. Mais il est notable que le théatre Francais laisse plus de place au theatre étranger que le théatre Anglais. Pendant ma formation au théatre National de Chaillot a Paris, j'ai eu l'ooportunité de travailler sur Shakespeare comme partir intégrante du programme, j'ai été sensibiisé au travail de Cheek by Jowl, et meme aux moins connues des pieces du barde anglais. Personne ne s'en charge ici pour Moliere. Une piece meurt si elle n'est pas jouée, alors aussi longtemps qu'on le fait, on la garde en vie.

CM: Dites m'en plus sur Exchange Theatre? Comment est née la compagnie et quels sont ses objectifs?

DF: Vous vous rappelez ce que je disais plus haut sur le manque de traduction? La compagnie est donc née de cette idée qu'il y avait un fossé a remplir sur la scene Britannique. Comme je le disais, le travail de Moliere tout comme d'autres textes majeurs de langue Francaise ne sont que tres rarement produites en Angleterre, alors qu'en France, nous recevons beaucoup de pieces d'outre-Manche. Nous avions donc la sensation qu'on pouvait faire advenir cet import dans l'autre sens aussi.

Ca a commencé comme un projet parallele a nos carrieres de comédiens mais ca représente maintenant l'essentiel de notre activité. Nous avons traduit Claudel, Sartre, ou Durringer ( qu'on a meme emmené off-broadway en 2011). Au fil du temps, on a trouvé notre propre language théatral, on a exploré des approches de la scene non-occidentales, du travail hors-les-murs, le multilinguisme, et j'ai aussi écris douze spectacles jeune public bilingues pour une saison de spectacles pour enfants a l'Institut Francais.

On s'est installé a London Bridge il y a cinq ans, construisant aussi notre réseau local au sein de notre council, et nous sommes heureux d'avoir un studio de répétitions au pied de Tower Bridge, au croisement de Bermondsey Street. Pas mal pour des étrangers! Nous sommes essentiellement une compagnie internationale basée a Londres, a présent, dans les pas d'artistes comme ceux que l'on peut voir au Barbican.

[davidfurlongtheatre]

Change the conversation

Today at the Young Vic, a session about The German Theatre Aesthetic was held to an assembly of directors and designers. It was about hearing about Johanna Meyer’s practice, a young German set designer who is currently working with Johannes Schütz, the designer for Joe Hill Gibbins current production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Johanna’s talk was very enlightening and all about collaborating with the director but being empowered and very free as a designer, and exchanging, talking about things... a lot. Some questions were heard about how somehow here in the Uk, the designer is in general considered as a technician to materialize the director’s ideas and how Johanna’s background and training seemed very different and rich, maybe richer, and very informative anyway. Then, one question came up about how German Theatre is the trend and how we’re fed by Ostermeier’s work at the moment or by Ivo Van Hove and by European theatre in a broader spectrum, and how is this good for Uk Theatre ? And how Joe Hill Gibbins or Sean Holmes are very keen on German Aesthetic and are in owe of ‘these things’ (I quote) until Johanna was litterally asked why she was a good import.  The point of the question being about why can’t British theatre not just inform itself by its own culture... I think many would agree that the answer is very obvious and I won’t go on talking about cultural exchanges and being influenced by others (David Lan does it better than me) but what is important I think is that this question offered a very accountable view on creative exchanges, as if everything has to be transactionnal. As the person who asked it agreed himself, this way of putting it in our capitalist society can be touchy. 

Now, in all fairness, maybe the formulation was just bad and I don’t think it was so ill-intended as it sounds - though it did sound awful - and I talked to him afterwards, he said he didn’t mean it like this. He did mean that ‘structurally’ Johanna is an ‘import’.

But if we continue using this ‘structure’ of thinking amongst artists, if we question someone like an ‘import’, and not like a collaborator, we are prolonging the arguments of Brexit, Trump, closure, rejections... in which people are merchandise.  We have to change the conversation, we have to talk empathically, like Johanna did through the whole talk, about sharing ideas between beings. And I think that’s what people like Joe Hill Gibbins, Simon Stone and many more are doing actually: changing the conversation. I’ve had the chance to be a small part of Joe’s devising team on the Changeling in 2011 and I can tell you he’s very British, despite being very influenced by foreign practice. What’s rich is the encounter of his identity with his influences. Same goes for me. I’m very French, and very Mauritian and very influenced by ten years developing in British theatre, or Street performances or screen acting or... well whatever... I’m no merchandise. Joe Hills Gibbins or katie Mitchell aren’t merchandise when they work abroad. And the sum of all this doesn’t alter any of my roots. And people like us don’t alter any other indigenous culture.  For me it goes without saying that this is what our work is about: creating conversations between who we are and who the others are ! Though, maybe it deserves to be said in current times in order no to adopt a vocabulary that shapes a conversation of division.

[davidfurlongtheatre]

My Name Is David Furlong

“Despite Brexit, I am not a foreigner just working in the Uk anymore, on the contrary, I belong here even more. I want to say thank you, to the Uk artists who empowered me and I want to tell you that I will not leave. I will stay by your side to ask the right questions. Culture means a lot, and should be much more present in the current debate after the Brexit vote.” 

My name is David Furlong. I’m a long-listed nominee for the Offies as Best Director.

I am a Mauritian director, trained at the National Theatre in France and I chose London 10 years ago to develop professionally and start a family.

My company’s logo, Exchange Theatre, is a bridge. It represents the one I built across the channel ever since, and between continents and people. With humility, I translate, I produce, direct, I give work to actors sometimes with a budget, sometimes on a profit share, I hire designers, I take masterclasses, I drive vans, I carry armchairs on the tube, I give community drama classes, I work hard. Last month, on the 8th of June, I was part of a panel at the Young Vic, talking to the Genesis network of directors about creating International collaborations. This helped me measure my journey: as tough as it was getting there, I felt I now had a voice as a foreign practitioner in this wonderful city that is London for the arts. On the 15th of June, I was opening my company’s Ninth edition of our annual bilingual festival and more specifically the Moliere piece I’m directing alternately in French and English. This was in London and I was giving an interview (to This Week London) saying how hard it was to make foreign theatre in the Uk, how it was such a small niche, but I was hopeful. On the 23rd, I voted for the first time in the Uk as a commonwealth citizen, and felt a sense of belonging to this country like never before.

Then, on the 24th of June, I woke up in a very different country from the one I moved to in 2006, even from the one I voted in the day before. Hopes collapsed, fears arisen, I thought of my daughter growing up here, feeling British but with a French passport… I thought of the work I had been doing here for a decade, bringing more than forty major unknown European plays to the British audience, bringing most of the practice I learnt here to wherever I worked in the rest of the world.

How was I to feel but marginalised? What was next? - No one knew, and still no one knows because no one planned for this to happen. That’s the thing with progress, you never think you’d go back- On the 26th of June, I was starting a workshop on multilingualism, with twelve European nationalities, facilitated by veteran international UK company Border Crossing. We were all stunned, but kept calm and carried on mixing Danish and Greek in our work. And then on the 29th, To my astonishment, I was nominated for an Offie as Best Director! All these opposing signals were very hard to process and make sense of. Just when I was thinking about giving up directing to focus on my acting career, for the first time in years, when I truly felt directing wasn’t going anywhere or making sense to anyone else than myself, I was given a form of recognition by my peers. By my British peers. I was thankful and confused at the same time. I spent a fortnight doing what you need to do with such great news, promoting my show, getting some publicity out of it. Tomorrow, the 13th, is the last show so this is no publicity stunt, but I still needed to make sense of it. Yesterday, the 11th of July, I was invited to be part of the Devoted and Disgruntled conversation on How to create a European Union of artists, hosted by Improbable at the Barbican. Throughout this day of hard-work, I went again through all the phases of grief, doubt and fear but the true meaning hidden behind this nomination started to appear. It's remarkable that our bilingual European work gets nominated in the current circumstances. It means a lot. Maybe precisely because the work we've been doing with my company for ten years, creating theatre beyond borders, does mean a lot after all ! Maybe because Culture means a lot, and should be much more present in the current debate after the Brexit vote. EU is not perfect but it has brought us more stability, peace, prosperity, mobility and diversity than most countries on the planet would dream of and I’m a product of the Uk being part of it: as a theatre maker, I owe much of my practice of a generous and open theatre to what I learnt from the English theatre world. Starting as an usher at the ROH to facilitating workshops myself at the YV, with many incredibly formative years of workshops at the National, the Barbican, Living Pictures, Oval House, 503 and many many more… The Uk that made me the director I am today is inclusive through the power of the Culture and Education that it has. I could never have developed such a sense of the other in any other place than London. Our artists and our facilitators, are the most altruistic in the sharing of their knowledge. The chances everyone gets to be taught are countless and I have numerous examples of learning very equally from major practitioners. Then yesterday, at D&D, all these very British practitioners who all gave me so much were worried and sad, betrayed by their own, some were even tearful. And I could see clearly that even my fellow British artists felt marginalised. This means that despite Brexit, I am not a foreigner just working in the Uk anymore, on the contrary, I belong here even more. I want to say thank you, to the Uk artists who empowered me, I want to tell you that I will not leave. I will stay by your side to ask the right questions. All across Europe today, we see the economic interests have disfigured the Eu, the rejection and hatred of Europe is not just British or English. It’s shared in the whole Western world. And the new responses are closure against foreigners, against the poor, against the rich people, against the politics, the bankers, the unemployed, the press…The current responses are only rejections, exclusions, destruction and departures: this is Amnesia and it makes so much space for a return to extreme nationalism everywhere. Our response has to be culture, education, diversity, hard work, all the things that I received. And through my work I will continue building cultural bridges, and closing gaps, and continue contribute to the cultural landscape of what is now my country. Because there is a real danger of Brexit being just the start of very dark times, I will share what I was given more than ever and continue the work I’m doing at educating, informing, producing theatre that links people to what they’re unfamiliar with. We’re story-tellers, we can write a different narrative with artistic values of culture, love, sharing and the sense of the other.

[davidfurlongtheatre]

Happy Birthday Moliere ! Today, 15th of January 2022 is Molière's 400th birthday! Tomorrow, listen my participation in BBC Radio 3's Words and Music show by Georgia Mann, about Molière, tomorrow Sunday, 16th January at 5.30pm. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013hwz And read my company's newsletter:  https://mailchi.mp/exchangetheatre/happybirthdaymoliere We are getting a season ready for you around the genius who offered us our most successful projects so far. Watch out for the full programme and in the meantime, rediscover all our past works: translations, articles, interviews and videos in the link in our biog. Get in touch if you are interested in holding an event, or if you are an academic with an interest in Molière's celebrations or 17th century French theatre. david@exchangetheatre.com #Moliere400 #Moliere #Birthday #Celebration #Podcast #BBCradio3 #Radio #Theatre #Hommage #Programmation #Drama #performance #actor #actorslife #acting #picoftheday #play #london #theatre #ukactor #ukactors #backstagelife #multicultural #diversity #multilingual #multilingualism #stageactor #workingactor (at Exchange Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/CYwKNCwokI0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[davidfurlongtheatre]

So proud of this cohort at @identitydrama_ IHP 2021 Thank You @exchangetheatre for the translation of Bal Trap by Xavier Durringer. (at Identity School of Acting) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXYgb8-InLw/?utm_medium=tumblr

[davidfurlongtheatre]

Do you know that with my company @exchangetheatre , I also have a rehearsal studio space available to hire: @thetrap_rehearsalstudio ! Exchange Theatre offers affordable rehearsal space in London Bridge and would be happy to hire it to fellow theatre companies or anyone else who needs it. Just opposite More London, The Trap is a five minute walk from London Bridge Station. The spaces are clean and bright, with private toilet facilities. There are chairs and tables for meetings and auditions and there's a piano available. Conveniently located in London Bridge, Exchange Theatre offers affordable rehearsal or meeting space in a clean and bright setting. Our space must be hired for a minimum of three hours, and is equipped with private toilet facilities, chairs and tables for meetings and auditions, a TV with chromecast, sound system and piano. Ideal for drama rehearsals, 1:1 singing lessons, workshops or meetings, the space cannot be used for musical theatre, opera or band rehearsals as it is in a residential area. https://www.instagram.com/p/CU74qM7IRUb/?utm_medium=tumblr

[davidfurlongtheatre]

[ANNOUNCEMENT] BREAK OF NOON By Paul Claudel - My first published translation by Shearsman Books. Edited by Anthony Rudolf, Translated by Jonathan Griffin, David Furlong, John Naughton & Susannah York In 2006, with my company @ExchangeTheatre, we put on our very first production, THE EXCHANGE by Paul Claudel at Jermyn Street Theatre and Hackney Empire studio which also was its British Premiere and we started talking of our unique translations from French with the Finborough Theatre. Over 15 years, we have been focusing our work on exchanges, or as Paul Claudel says, “towards the reunion of the world”. The symbolist playwright first inspired Exchange Theatre values and influenced its work. In 2018, the Finborough Theatre programmed our translation of Partage de Midi, Break of Noon by Paul Claudel at The Finborough Theatre. In 15 years, after translating Molière, Sartre, Durringer, this is our first publication. BREAK OF NOON is a collaborative publication edited by Anthony Rudolf, from Menard Press who offered to publish it. “Break of Noon” by Paul Claudel, about decolonisation, love and identity. It is also be published for our 15th anniversary. The critical apparatus is completed with essays by Exchange Theatre's artistic director David Furlong, Professor John Naughton, a leading academic authority on Claudel, and the late Susannah York on her involvement with the play. https://www.shearsman.com/store/Paul-Claudel-Break-of-Noon-p363573575 https://www.instagram.com/p/CT-HqSqoCTl/?utm_medium=tumblr

[davidfurlongtheatre]

Why can't we stop talking? Because that's how ideas get shared and enriched and that's how projects get done and followed (and sometimes copied and that's fine we'll talk to them...) and that's how dreams stop being just dreams, because when they become conversations, they become real, and that's how values and ideals get transcended, because they become known and tangible through the conversations. We have reshaped our social networks, after enriching conversations with our communication interns, in order to make our interactions with you, the audience, more of a dialogue. Which one do you want to join ?

https://mailchi.mp/exchangetheatre/the-ideas-of-march-join-the-conversations (March 2018)

[davidfurlongtheatre]

Speech to Equity about translations and multilingualism in theatre (2009)

In December 2009, David Furlong, the artistic director of the company was invited to talk about Translation and Multilingualism in an Equity meeting. It was in the company's archives since then ! Here it is, public and transcripted.

" As an introduction, I would like to quote a French symbolist poet Paul Claudel who was, even at the turn of the 20th Century, deeply in projection towards the future and fond of transports like cars, planes, everything that goes towards what he called "the reunion of the world". He once said "There is nothing or no individuals that doesn’t need the world around". Nowadays he will praise the Internet and the fact that this movement that makes the world smaller is getting even faster.

 It’s unfortunately a movement mainly seen in the world of Business. In the cultural world in the Uk, there is no real figure or calculation of the place of foreign works, although according to the translator Kevin Halliwell, the only one who translated the National Swedish treasure -playwright Lars Noren- into English, only 3% of work comes from an international background. Which will explain that you’ve never heard of Lars Noren. By comparison, France has 40% and Lars Noren is performed at the National theatre. I started Exchange Theatre after observing this situation. I trained at the National Theatre in France and have always known about Shakespeare as you would evidently. I would have thought this would have been true for Moliere, or Calderon or Pasolini here in the UK. In my generation, It wasn’t. My vision and that of Exchange Theatre is of a theatre that abolishes such cultural barreers in translating and producing shows, all unknown, or rare works, from foreign backgrounds.We also strive to create a highly sensorial work with the influence of both westernand non western influences, but this is another topic and I will talk today about translating.

 Text is the base of the work. Our primary objective is to make some rare or unknown texts discovered. It mostly consists of a translation work led by our team and for which our bilingualism is essential. Translation is somehow part of me. I am from Mauritius and I grew up speaking French at home and English at school. Therefore I developed a natural inclination to translate French plays into English or English works into French. I translated Mark Ravenhill’s Handbag and Martin Mc Donagh’s Lieutenant of Inishmore whilst I was working for a French company whose mission it was to discover the In Yer face theatre from the 90’s. And since moving to London, with Exchange Theatre, I translated The Exchange by Paul Claudel, Bal Trap by Xavier Durringer, Two one act farces by Georges Feydeau, a Victor Hugo play and other unknown playwrights.

 We often find older translations that are dated or too approximately done, or sometimes too academic to be performed. Since we want to be true to the original play and use faithful translations, we end up producing our owns. Here in the Uk, there are few real translators.

 An anecdote about when we were working on Xavier Durringer's translation of Bal Trap. I approached Mark Ravenhill because he was credited as the translator of a previous Durringer’splay, and I wanted to know if he would do it again, when he answered "I don’t speak French". I was confused as his translation had been performed at the Royal Court. Then he explained: his job was to rewrite a litteral translation.  Even Christopher Campbell, literary manager of the National theatre admitted recently at a symposium on French theatre (held at the French Institute) that playwrights are so important in the Uk that their credit as a translator is crucial to the commercial success of a show. It’s a great way of having David Harrower’s version of a Strindberg play or Tony Kushner’s new translation of Brecht. However good those productions and playwrights are, they are not Strindberg or Brecht, they have a style so the plays are not real translations. They are adaptations, and they make the plays more British. But an adaptation of a play takes it away from the original. It's not important whether to anglicise the play or not, that’s not the point.

 What’s important is to understand it from the inside and then present it in a way that is not a version. Because we want poetic licenses to be kept or rythm to be more close to the original. It’s important to serve the intentions of the original playwright as best possible. What is interesting is the layers of translation that we to go through. Everything we say has so much history and echoes and nuances. And for me, translation needs to be very active, not literal, and have much to do with what happens. At the same time, when we start working on translations, my main concern is that we don’t want to do a re-interpretation. That will come later in the production process. Translation simply takes into account accurately the reality of both languages and cultures. We ask ourselves, how would he have written the play if he spoke English? The rhythm is very important. There's a rhythm to the thought, the delivery, the sound of the language. With the company, we found that this rhythm can also be translated. We find equivalences that work. We workshop the play with actors in the rehearsal room and get the spirit of the work. With actors, we reach deeper into the language of the characters. Of course there is always a language consultant to validate the grammar or the vocabulary. And I am also very concerned by the fidelity to the original but sometimes the translation found by an actor feels so real. It’s not faithful in a technical way, but it feels true to what the original line feels like. Drama must, in order to communicate, have both a technical surface level, and a deeper feeling level. We think that the feel of a play is transferrable if the translators have a really good knowledge of both languages and it is essential that they has avery clear understanding of the culture behind the play.  As we were translating a Feydeau farce for example, we looked into an existing old translations of Madame’s late mother where a character said in the original old French "Je ne trouvais pas de lanternes", Lanterne litteraly means light, like cabs have on their rooftop, so the translation should have been "I couldnt find a cab". But the translator, a university professor emerita, translated litteraly the words he found in his dictionnary and made the character says in his version "I couldn’t find a light" which makes no sense at all in the context. Theatre translators can’t be just academics either. To be literal and academic would be to miss the point sometimes, and the jokes mostly.

 I experienced personally how very interesting and rewarding it is for a playwright to be well translated. Two of my own plays were written in French and translated into English. Because it was done by two translators who have been living in France and experienced the culture intimately, their work was very accurate. To the point where it opened up my own imagination to the fact that if the characters were to have spoken English originally, they would have had some nuances which they didn't have in the French original. I rediscovered my characters, in a way and they made me laugh again. I felt it was being true to my spirit. I believe that they are good tranlations without being adaptations and I think this is due to the double-culture of both playwright and translator.

 I would like to finish by opening up to an idea that is one of the root of my work with Exchange. Beyond the mere discovery, the aim is also to make the plays accessible to a 21stcentury audience. Beyond mere translations, we started exploring Multi-lingualism since the founder show of the company. One of our show contained 2 spoken languages and subtitles. This reflects the reality of the contemporary world where people and languages travel more and moreeasier. Our last show, The Flies, adapted from French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, reflects this with French, British, Israeli, Mauritian, Japanese and Greek actors sharing the stage. This also creates a show that sounds different from anything you would hear on the London stage. It was quite a unique performance where every one sounded differrently, well beyond the limits of "RP", but it resembles undoubtedly the world we live in. Yesterday I saw a wonderful show: War Horse, which is an amazing piece of work. There were French and German characters but they were British actors who learned their lines phonetically. Despite the quality of the show, their accent and language was so bad, I couldn’t help but asking myself why they didn’t cast French and German actors ! And I’m not saying this because I’m foreign. I met Barrie Ruter, recently, from Northern Broadsides, who directed Othello with Lenny Henry last month at Trafalgar studios. He’s lobbying for the same thing, only he’s not even talking about foreign accents ! Diversity and interbreeding are at the centre of our preoccupations. I hope I will come back one day to talk to you about my future project which will hopefully contain French, English, Spanish, Arabic and Nigerian languages and of course I will cast my actors accordingly."

David Furlong

Artistic Director of Exchange Theatre

[davidfurlongtheatre]

“Brexit is happening in the arts too”

EQUITY MEETING PART 2 A Q&A following David Furlong’s talk about Exchange Theatre’s by invitation from Equity S&SE Branch at the Young Vic Theatre, 5th Feb 2018. 

A great conversation followed David’s talk about his company (part 1: click here). Debate ensued with several very interesting voices in the room. I’ve tried to recount the conversation the most honestly I could:

David : (End of the speech) : I would like to open on a provocation: Brexit is happening in the art too. Despite us thinking that as artists, we are left-wing tolerant thinkers, as a foreigner, I can feel it happening. About a year ago, I was here, at the Young Vic at a conversation about European influences on theatre design. At one point, someone suggested that we might not need ‘imports’ from outside the UK, that we had better encourage in-land talents rather than (I quote!) ‘go and spend two days at the Berlin Schaubune and come back to tell us how it’s done’… I wasn’t so offended by the over-simplification in that statement, but what was worrying was the general silent nod in the room. No one challenged it. Everyone seemed to agree ! Despite our politically-correct stand on Brexit, in truth this argument follows the same line of leavers: it’s seeing people as competitive merchandise rather than enriching exchange. We need to change the conversation and bring new notions to the table. Migration is not a problem, it’s the answer.I have a third-culture kid daughter, she’s 6, growing up bilingual as a Londoner with a very fluid identity. And maybe so are your children. I’m totally settled in the UK now, after 14 years. People like me and her belong here and yet, we don’t actually fit any boxes in the equality monitoring forms. People like us are many, more and more numerous, more and more mixed, and totally under-represented. These people are the future.There is a lot, there is so much done and still to do for Bamers, for sexual and gender equalities, for all minorities and fluid identities but what about the people who literally can’t tick the boxes on the form. The company I started has a tagline: ‘theatre beyond borders’, ok, we’ve done that now, but now that we’ve crossed the lines, Is it not time that not we go beyond the boxes? “ - Though, I disagree with the assumptions than Europeans are more culturally aware than the British, I have many foreign friends, not in the arts, who are completely clueless about our heritage and don’t anything about Noel Coward. I have a French friend who telling me off permanently about Brexit. We are as much embarassed about it. It’s a trauma on both sides. What do you think of this ?

- David: I think it’s true that ‘general knowledge’ is centered towards our own culture in general and not only in the UK. My concern was about artists and the education they receive. I’m not expecting anyone to be aware of foreign theatre, I’m just worried if theatre makers are not educated to learn from other culture’s theatre.

And I hope you don’t feel I’m telling you off. On the contrary, you know, I’ve developed as an artist in the UK. Uk artists are some of the best at creating process of dialogues. (Probably because society is so codified, and it’s so hard to talk across the layers of society so they got a lot better and pragmatic at facilitating respectful ways of speaking). So every tools I use to create empathy and conversations in my rehearsal rooms are tools I learnt here with Uk practitionners. So the answer is there, we have it. The answer is to use those tools to keep the conversation going about this ‘trauma’ that we’re talking about: whichever side we’re on, however confused or frustrated we are, we as artists have all the tools to talk about it better and in a beneficial way. Look at Devoted and Disgruntled, listen to Declan Donnellan talk about Empathy and how we performing artists, and actors are the best equipped to understand it. Let’s spread our message as artists. We’re very good at doing it in our rehearsal rooms and we have to use it offstage to prevent each sides of the debate from closing in.

Recently, there David Hare wrote a guardian piece, followed by Michael Billington, about how European theatre is invading the English tradition and for me it’s comparable to women who criticised the #metoo movement, it’s counter-productive, it doesn’t go the right way. I’m not saying they haven’t got a point, but it’s not the right time to follow a conservative agenda which can be more harmful in the long term. It’s time to change this tendency to oppose tradition with novelty. The latter is always rooted in the other. It has to be a dialogue. And the parallels between Brexit, metoo, and the migrant crisis (which is not real, the migrant are 1% of population), are not by chance, they’re all agendas of closures and not exchanging anymore, and they’re all happening at the same time.

- I’ve been a foreigner in this coutry for 40 years and there has always been a sense of being ‘the other’. And some people sometimes get very angry at me just for being one. It seems to me that British people don’t even realise when they’re being nationalist (In France of Germany, because of their history, people are very aware when they are).

Thank you for sharing this experience. I think that sometimes despite all the political correctness and openness, it’s hard to understand what it is to be ‘the other’ unless you’ve experienced it. And the Uk seems to be very open about this at first. The first question you’re asked, always with genuine curiosity is ‘where are you from?’. But I now really despise the question, because it puts me back in my box. I’m from somewhere but where I am now is more important. I’ve been developing 14 years here as an artist, mixing my initial influences with my encounters along the years, so the result of this journey is what really matters. Recently, I was very happy to pass two rounds of interviews with a major theatre institution and the last interview with the artistic director went quite wrong because he started with the question ‘Where are you from?’ and because I’m polite, I answered and as my training was in France, then I was French. When, asked on what I could bring to the venue, I replied diversity, he became very defensive about it. ‘Well I don’t see much diversity at la Comédie Francaise?’. And I wasn’t comparing, I was actually trying to contribute deeply to the present situation informed by my journey. For him, it was not possible to read my thoughts the way they formed. He’s shaped by his own background, his ‘given circumstances’ and he could not put himself in my shoes. My input would have been more valid if I had been from the same ‘mould’, studied in the same places and shaped my thinking like his. But coming from such a different perspective was not receivable. I’m not blaming him, I think it was an unconscious labelling but I’m sure it lacked real empathy. Emma Rice basically tells a similar story at the Globe, with a different issue of class. If even the decision-makers in the arts don’t change their perspectives, then yes, the leavers would have won.

- I want to go back on what you said about the basis of our culture and education and that in their training young practitioners are not made aware of foreign cultures and I think that’s very true and it’s very hard for mixed heritage actors or directors like myself to find a personal connection to our work. So we end up pigeon-holed. And later, to find work, we’re either too light or too dark…

I entirely relate to this and yes, for me, it’s part of the same thinking. First, in terms of training, I don’t think it’s specific to the arts. In any field of study, pupils are specialised very early, so they become experts at one thing but can’t see their field in a more global context, or co-existing with many other fields. Even in banking, I speak to quants who observe the same thing and HR are therefore very keen on foreigners to offer a more global view to their team. I think it’s crucial to look out of the arts to understand how we think. And then, it’s as crucial to take a step back and see the bigger picture around our expertise, otherwise we just end up in a box again. As for the difficulties of coming from a mixed-identity and never fitting the brief: this time it’s about how other people are putting us in boxes. I seem to be banging on about boxes but I truly think it’s one of the main issue and a big mindset that needs to shift.

- I experienced the same issue with accents, I have a Scottish accent and it did put me in a box too. But we have to embrace it at the end of the day. And the flipside of the coin is that it can become infuriating when people get the part that you’re naturally fit for by putting on a fake accent. It also happens a lot.

Absolutely. You know, Barrie Ruter from Northern Broadsides has been lobbying for a diversity of accents for ages and he was not even talking about foreign accents ! And on the second idea, I’m not of those who think you have to be of the nationality or origins of the character you’re playing, that’s beside the point of acting and when we work hard at getting it right, we can play anything. I think it matters more when language is involved but that's probably my biais too. Although I'm pretty sure that French characters in War Horse shouldn't have a strong English accent.... So it's a sensitive case of balance and mindfulness in casting and of being more imaginative and outreaching. Some recents debates around Yellowface really pointed out to a problem with diversity in the Uk. It just needs to be addressed. It just needs to be in the conversation without established figures brushing it off as soon as they can narrow it down in the stage or the guardian. I’m very lucky to be mentored by Phelim Mc Dermott from Improbable and he almost knocks on my head for me to say out loud that I think there’s a problem with diversity. And it takes some guts to come in front of you and say it because I might be wrong in what I say, but I’m sure that we need to talk about it. Much more.

[davidfurlongtheatre]

“Theatre beyond boxes”: A look back on twelve years of Exchange and Theatre.

EQUITY MEETING 2018 - PART 1  David Furlong’s talk by invitation from Equity S&SE Branch at the Young Vic Theatre, 5th Feb 2018.

“ Thank you very much for inviting me today. Interestingly, I was invited almost exactly ten years ago to talk about my work as an emerging director and company at the West and South West Branch.

I remember talking about the work that was driving my company at the beginning: we set off to translate major and unknown French-speaking plays for a London audience. The sort of plays that tour nationally every year in a different production, or whose authors are internationally in general knowledge. Victor Hugo for example, or 20th century symbolist Paul Claudel... the French TS Eliot... ? Claudel is huge across the channel. Unknown here. We premiered his cult play The Exchange in 2006, and I’m very proud to announce that we are invited by the Finborough Theatre to produce another one of his play, BREAK OF NOON, to celebrate Claudel’s 150th birthday and as part of the 150th year of the theatre.

When I was a young actor working on the London Fringe, doing my Shakespeare, my new writings pieces, and whenever I talked about French theatre to my fellow colleagues there was either a big blank in conversations, or a total misconception of what it is. Seen as terribly classical, Moliere was reduced as period farces, excluding all his depth, and confused with Commedia Dell'Arte... !  Although, Italians were not better known: Pirandello, Dario Fo, even Goldoni are just as obscure as Spanish golden Age of Comedia and I only encountered puzzled faces when mentionning Calderon.  I had trained in France and I had learned not only about Shakespeare but also Marlowe, Wordsworth, Kipling, Dahl, Pasolini, Goethe... I thought there was something terribly missing there. So, because I couldn't right the wrongs for the whole of Europe and because I trained in France and was the most knowledgeable for it, I set up my company in order to take a niche of bringing French theatre to the Uk and do it justice. Since then, we've translated for the first time plays by Feydeau, Sartre and Claudel among the most famous ones, over ten years. Little did I know when I started that there would be so much to do, so much space in the niche.

Our primary objective was to make some rare or unknown texts discovered. It mostly consists of a translation work led by our team and for which our bilingualism is essential. Translation is somehow part of me. I am from Mauritius and I grew up speaking French at home and English at school. Therefore I developed a natural inclination to translate French plays into English or English works into French. With Exchange Theatre, I translated Sartre, Georges Feydeau, Durringer and we started having a real process.

 First, what’s important is to understand a language from the inside and then present it in a way that is not a version. Because we want poetic licenses to be kept or rythm to be more close to the original. It’s important to serve the intentions of the original playwright as best possible. What is interesting is the layers of translation that we to go through. Everything we say has so much history and echoes and nuances in our personal existence. And for us, translation needs to be very active, not literal, and have much to do with what happens.  At the same time, when we start working on translations, our main concern is that we don’t want to do a re-interpretation. That could come later maybe, depending on the production process. Translation simply takes into account accurately the reality of both languages and cultures. We ask ourselves, how would the playwright have written the play if he/she spoke English? The rhythm is very important. There's a rhythm to the thought, the delivery, the sound of the language. With the company, we found that this rhythm can also be translated. We find equivalences that work. We workshop the play with actors in the rehearsal room and get the spirit of the work. With actors, we reach deeper into the language of the characters. Of course there is always a language consultant to validate the grammar or the vocabulary. And I am also very concerned by the fidelity to the original.  But sometimes the translation found by an actor feels so real: It’s not faithful in a technical way, but it feels true to what the original line feels like. Drama must, in order to communicate, have both a technical surface level, and a deeper feeling level. 

And we think that the feeling of a play is transferable if the translators have a really good knowledge of both languages and it is essential that they has a very clear understanding of the culture behind the play.

Beyond mere translations, we’ve been exploring Multi-lingualism since the founder show of the company. All our shows contain at least 2 spoken languages and subtitles. This reflects the reality of the contemporary world. One of our works back in 2009, The Flies, adapted from French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, reflected this with French, British, Israeli, Mauritian, Japanese and Greek actors sharing the stage. This created a show that  also sounded different from anything you would hear on the London stage. It was quite a unique performance where every one sounded differrently. And in 2010 we entered the French Institute for a two year residency, for which we adapted twelve young audience stories for the stage, by Maupassant, Jules Verne and many more. This is when something started to change. The audience there were generally living in the English speaking world with an English mum and a French dad or even a Spanish parent too, so there was a fluidity in their comprehension of languages that allowed us to play and explore how languages work on stage.

And also this work of passion was taking us far beyond ‘French theatre’ it had a downside: very quickly, we were put in a box. The French company. Which is ironic because I'm from Mauritius and I have just had a dna test done: turns out that in blood, I'm Irish-Indian. And French speaking. So, after the residency, we decided to embrace that box rather than fight being pigeonholed: Since we now had two audiences, we would create shows produced in paralllel in both english and French. We first produced a play with two parallel casts. The observations we made here looking at both similarities and differences between each cast were very interesting and informative. One fed the other. This became our process: Since then we produced all our work in both languages, but actually with just one bilingual cast performing both versions. And finally, in 2016, we entered the current phase of the company, by finally doing our first Moliere, the epitomy of our ‘box’, after 10 years of doing French plays. The week of the Brexit vote, I voted IN as a commonwealth citizen, feeling part of this country, as an artist and as a dad; the day after I was being told that I was a foreigner again; and two days after, I was nominated for an Offie as best director. A lot of conflicting signals.

This is the last part and it might be the most interesting thing, all the shows now have actors who have a native command of both languages. They are intimately living as bridges between the cultures and the countries. In out last show, we had a French-British actor, an Italian-French-English actor and a Iranian-French-American actress. They are all third culture kids. It’s an actual demographic category of people, who may very well be your own children, and who are growing up in a different place and culture than their parent’s.

And, I would like to finish by a provocation:

Brexit is happening in the art too. Despite us thinking that as artists, we are left-wing tolerant thinkers, as a foreigner, I can feel it happening. About a year ago, I was here, at the Young Vic at a conversation about European influences on theatre design. At one point, someone suggested that we might not need ‘imports’ from outside the UK, that we had better encourage in-land talents rather than (I quote!) ‘go and spend two days at the Berlin Schaubune and come back to tell us how it’s done’... I wasn’t so offended by the over-simplification in that statement, but what was worrying was the general silent nod in the room. No one challenged it. Everyone seemed to agree ! Despite our politically-correct stand on Brexit, in truth this argument follows the same line of leavers: it’s seeing people as competitive merchandise rather than enriching exchange. We need to change the conversation and bring new notions to the table. Migration is not a problem, it’s the answer.

I have a third-culture kid daughter, she's 6, growing up bilingual as a Londoner with a very fluid identity. And maybe so are your children. I'm totally settled in the UK now, after 14 years. People like me and her belong here and yet, we don't actually fit any boxes in the equality monitoring forms. People like us are many, more and more numerous, more and more mixed, and totally under-represented. These people are the future.

There is a lot, there is so much done and still to do for Bamers, for sexual and gender equalities, for all minorities and fluid identities but what about the people who literally can't tick the boxes on the form. The company I started has a tagline: 'theatre beyond borders', ok, we've done that now, but now that we've crossed the lines, Is it not time that not we go beyond the boxes? “

A great conversation ensued with several voices in the room : for PART 2, Click here.