Theatre lacks the need for translation

Last semester I studied in Dijon, France, and, before you ask, yes, that’s where the mustard… Last semester I studied in Dijon, France, and, before you ask, yes, that’s where the mustard comes from. It was an amazing town in the heart of France’s wine region that struck a nice balance between modernity and old-world charm. The program there offered us international students a chance to take part in the numerous cultural activities going on in the city. One such event was an avant-garde theatre production.

Now, I love theatre, so I was excited by the opportunity to see what this French theatre experience would be like, but I was more than a little worried that the fast-paced dialogue would go flying over my head as I struggled to put together a coherent plot. God knows I did not want to resort to pulling out my pocket dictionary during the show. I tried, at all costs, to avoid looking like the stereotypical foreigner.

The night of the performance, my friends and I donned our chic, black outfits with our pointy-toed boots (something no self-respecting French girl is without) and hopped on the bus downtown. As we entered the lobby of the theater, we were greeted by a woman wearing a 1950s-style dress, complete with pill box hat. Sitting completely still on a platform, every few minutes she became animated and made the announcement: “Welcome to Tati-ville. You are in Tati-ville.”

Her English was clipped and mechanical with only a slight French accent, and while we were relieved to hear a little English, we still had no idea what was going on. As it turned out, the night’s performances were based on movies by the French filmmaker Jacques Tati — none of us were familiar with his work. Given our bizarre welcome in the lobby, we could only imagine what was in store for us.

The show was comprised of different skits with the same principal actors. Everything from musical numbers to mime routines was thrown at us, and, though we didn’t understand every word or even most of them — especially when the lyrics were delivered “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General”-style — we knew what was going on anyway.

Through body language, music, facial expressions and costumes, we found that we didn’t need words to find the humor in the most masculine actor dressing in drag and singing soprano or in the musical number where words were substituted with dog barks.

That’s what is so amazing about theatre. It fully engages the senses in ways other art forms cannot. Theatre combines art forms to produce its effect and convey its message. Whether it’s humorous or tragic, we don’t need the dialogue on stage to tell us that. We see it in the set and the actors’ body language. We hear it in the tempos and the rhythms of the music. We feel it.

As we made our way out of the theater, each of us took away something different from the show that night, and, though we needed language to tell the cab driver where we lived, we hadn’t needed it to enjoy the performance that night.