My research has moved on from the fundamentals of linguistic code-switching to dramaturgy and performance studies. My goal is to investigate multilingual drama in practice through all perspectives, including critics’ reviews and artists’ notes. My July 1st bibliography focused dramaturgical researches, from which a shared conundrum rise. Scholars and artists have been debating over translation on stage. What kind of translation could serve the narrative the best? Or if a translation is necessary at all? I think the verdict to that debate comes in two parts — from the artists and from the audience. I turned to the reviews to get a glimpse of the audience’s mind.
I put my main focus on Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest, a play that sparkled my interest in multilingual theatre on migration. I have never seen any production of this play but read the script many times. This play is a metatheatrical catharsis to the playwright’s Japanese heritage. Directed by Aya Ogawa who’s also Japanese American, this production features a cast of all bilingual speakers of English and Japanese to deliver multiple passages in Japanese. With reviews from regular theatre-goers and professional critics, I want to evaluate how a mostly Anglophone audience perceives this play.
The script of Suicide Forest contains no English translation, but multiple reviews mentioned that there’s some surtitles for the Japanese passages. Interestingly, Kenji Fujishima from TheatreMania commented that Lee doesn’t offer much of a handle to their Western audience besides the English dialogues, suggesting that the transcultural aspect was more of a gap than the bilingual one. Although I cannot evaluate on the execution of the surtitles as someone who didn’t see the production, the reception hardly mentioned the effect of it. A shared sentiment, summarized by a Goodreads reviewer, is that this play “does not care at all if you can read or speak Japanese.” Fujishima concludes their review crowning Suicide Forest as “an invigoratingly risky, genuinely thought-provoking experience, one worth seeing no matter your linguistic and cultural background.”
I had the honor of meeting the playwright/actor Haruna and the director Aya in a playwriting class. I did ask them about the non-Japanese-speaking audience and the extensive Japanese passage, and they offered a piercing answer. The duo decided that “if you don’t speak Japanese, then it’s not for you.” That’s when I decided I want to create bilingual theatre unapologetically. After my research into Suicide Forest’s reception, I think the language barrier is less of a problem than I had previously believed, because authenticity and genuineness transcend beyond languages.
References:
Fujishima, Kenji. “Trying to Break through Cultural and Language Barriers in Suicide Forest.” TheaterMania.com -, March 28, 2023. https://www.theatermania.com/off-broadway/news/suicide-forest-review_88027.html/.
“Suicide Forest.” Aya Ogawa. Accessed July 16, 2023. http://ayaogawa.com/suicide-forest.
“Suicide Forest.” Goodreads. Accessed July 16, 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42361999-suicide-forest.