Play (excerpts) | Romania | Romanian
July, 2015Before the reading at the Lark, I was hoping that the audience would learn some interesting facts about my country, but at the same time I was hoping that both actors and audience would discover familiar things in the play, things that are universal.
I also was a little bit afraid--there are many things in the play that are so specifically Romanian that they cannot be translated 100%. Together with Ioana and the actors, I tried to bring these specific things as close as possible to the American audience. And I think we succeeded.
During the translation process, Ioana and I talked a lot about the situation in post-communist Romania, about all kind of people living together in blocks of flats, about young people over the age of 20 who are still living with their parents, about the factories that had to close leaving many people unemployed, about the importance of colored plastic bags.
The Life Expectancy of Washing Machines is not only about the problems of post-transition Romania, not only about a generation gap, a midlife crisis, loneliness, and a unusual love story. It's also a play about the courage to follow your dreams. “The themes are universal," and audience member wrote to me. "All this could have happened in a small village in the Appalachians, or the Adirondacks, or Rosedale, Queens.” “It's a love story," another wrote, "with each of the characters pining after an unrealistic love in order to distract themselves from their present reality.” Clearly the audience understood the message of the play, and even more. They discovered things I didn't even think about while writing the play. And I think all this was due to the translation.
- Elise Wilk
Translating Elise’s play was a wonderful experience, in the format offered within the hotINK at the Lark project. To have the Romanian author, as well as the American stage director, assistants, and actors working together, discussing facts and characters, refining cue after cue, sounding layers of meaning, defining cultural differences, finding the right expression together where needed--that can well be considered the ideal way to finish a theatrical translation. It was indeed a time of warm cooperation and discovery. The members of the team brought to the table their professionalism and experience, their gifts and wholehearted involvement. The response of the audience in the end confirmed our work well done. A well-crafted foreign story from Romania came to be understood and considered relevant across the distance of a continent and an ocean, in the United States.
- Ioana Ieronim
France | French | Play (excerpts)
April, 2013Under the cover of one of her many aliases--"M. Auberte the Mad"--the author takes the stage and conjures up a whirlwind of scenes. This comedy about power relations presents some thirty characters at the dinner table, in the bedroom, and in the boardroom--at work and at play, but always in trouble. Witness domestic drama, national scandal, and capital crimes--in a word, the everyday insanity of the world we live in. The Chonchons, dramatis personae of this play, come directly from Borgès' book El libro de los seres imaginarios. They can be full of humanity, and then all of a sudden they will sin, out of pride, stupidity or fragility.
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