Staging Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Anglo-American Approaches to Political Theatre

Stefania Taviano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351898270
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is the first extended treatment of the English translations, stagings, and reception of the political plays of Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Focusing on the United Kingdom and the United States, Stefania Taviano offers a critique of the cultural stereotyping and political conservatism that have pursued these playwrights in translation and argues for the possibility of remaining true to Fo and Rame's political commitment while preserving the comic nature of their plays. Taviano shows how the choices made by the translators and stagers of Fo and Rame's political theatre reveal attitudes toward foreign cultures and theatre generally and Italy in particular. Among the questions she poses are 'What characterizes the process of acculturation that takes place when political theatre is transposed from one culture to another?' 'To what extent are images of foreign literary production affected by dominant translation practices and theatre traditions?' Perhaps most important, 'What constitutes political theatre in a given society, and how are such definitions used to categorize and contain theatre texts that are disturbing, challenging, and difficult to stage?' Her book concludes with an investigation of the meaning of Fo and Rame's political theatre today that points the way for future critical studies of the politics behind the translation and stage production of political theatre outside its culture of origin.

1
Transposing Theatre across Cultures

When foreign plays are transposed into English, they are incorporated in the repertoire of theatre texts of the receiving society. Hence they go through an elaborate process of adjustment, made up of different phases. Each phase corresponds to the interpretation of theatre practitioners whose task is to make the foreign text familiar and acceptable to the target audience. It will be helpful in this first chapter to investigate some general patterns inherent to the process of translation of foreign plays to show how they apply to and affect the British and American approach to Fo and Rame’s theatre. Such introductory analysis will provide us with an overall picture of predominant theatre and cultural practices before going into a detailed study of British and American productions of their plays. More precisely, the use of ‘literal’ translations of Fo and Rame’s plays, the acting styles adopted in the productions and the stage representations of Italian culture are predominant factors shaping the process of appropriation of Fo and Rame’s plays. These factors will be considered within the overall question of the reception of Fo and Rame’s plays, affected by the British and American tendency to rewrite the otherness of foreign cultures.

Translation does not take place in isolation. It is the result of social, cultural and economic constraints which shape the coming into existence of the foreign text. When foreign plays are translated into English, the British and American theatrical systems have an enormous impact on the way their plays are interpreted. The target theatrical system consists of a combination of all those theatrical factors shaping the mise en scéne. The theatrical system of a society includes predominant acting styles, domestic traditions in terms of specific theatrical genres and subsequent audience expectations. Also relevant are the agenda of the theatre(s) staging the mise en scéne, combined with the audience’s preference and familiarity with a specific repertoire, the policy of cultural institutions, such as public bodies controlling the allocation of funding to the arts.¹ All of these factors are then informed by the social, cultural and historical framework surrounding them. The theatrical system shaping translation discourse is strictly linked to the values of the society to which it belongs. The way in which foreign plays are performed and interpreted is affected by cultural codes and values governing society at large.

An element of the target theatrical system which shapes the translation of plays into English is the practice of so-called ‘literal translations’. Commissioning ‘literal translations’, which supposedly provide an ‘accurate’ rendering of the foreign text, later adapted by theatre practitioners, represents a British and American policy often adopted in the translation of foreign theatre texts. The assumption that a literal translation provides an accurate rendering of the foreign text is a claim used to minimise the arbitrary nature of this practice. One only needs to consider the notion which supposedly justifies the use of literal translations and their subsequent adaptation by dramatists, i.e. the speakability of the translated text. Since it is commonly argued that the translation of a play needs to be speakable, that its dialogue needs to be fluent, a theatre professional, such as a director or a dramatist, is the only person considered to be capable of performing such a task, whereas it is believed that translators are not in the position to produce a speakable text. Such strategy reflects the negative implications that copyright law has on the status and financial rewards of the translator in theatre. What this practice involves in real terms is paying a very low fee to an unknown translator, in several cases without even acknowledging his/her work, to produce a text which will then be made ‘speakable’ or ‘performable’ by a well known playwright or director. The latter’s name in the promotional material and in the theatre programme ensures, or at least contributes to, the success of the stage production. In most instances those who are recognised as adaptors do not know the source language.

Most stagings of Fo and Rame’s texts in English are based on a literal translation used as the starting point of a so-called ‘adaptation’. The first major British production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, staged in 1979 by the socialist company Belt and Braces, was directed and adapted by Gavin Richards from a literal translation by Gillian Hanna. Although Hanna’s name appears in the programme, Gavin Richards is the one who has been given all the credit and who has mainly benefited financially from the enormous success of that production.² As will be shown in chapter three, Richards’s adaptation presented British audiences with a very different play from the one known by Italian audiences on a number of levels, from the alterations of the dramatic text to the theatrical style adopted for the mise en scéne. The second main staging of Accidental Death of an Anarchist took place in January 1991 at the National Theatre and the translated text was identified as ‘a new English version’ by Alan Cumming and Tim Supple. This more recent text was defined as a new English version simply to distinguish it from the first one and to identify it as a text closer to the ‘spirit’ of the original. When the second production came out it was emphasised that, while the first focused on a comic interpretation of the play, as Fo complained (quoted in Nightingale, 1991: 14), affecting the political content of the source text, this ‘new version’ was based on a British approach, in Cumming’s view (quoted in Kaye, 1991: 17), and enriched with references to British political events. The question is then, in what way is the ‘new English version’ different from the previous ‘adaptation’? And on what grounds do we distinguish between an ‘adaptation’ and ‘a new version’? As will be shown in chapter three, they both alter the source text in different ways, the first to make it funnier and fit it into the English tradition of the music-hall and the second to make it more relevant to the experience of target spectators.

There are also more complex cases which show how the multiple interpretation process of theatre texts is made up of a number of layers, all connected to each other, some of which are more visible than others. The American premiere of Dario Fo’s We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! (Non sipaga! Non si paga!) in 1979, presented by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, was based on a British translation by Lino Pertile, which was adapted by Bill Colvill and Robert Walker, and an American translation by the People’s Translation Service and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which was adapted by the San Francisco Mime Troupe itself. Here we have a text, which is the result of two translations, a British one and a collective American one, as in the tradition of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, both of which are then further adapted. The Mime Troupe calls this a ‘version’, just like the above-mentioned English text of Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Cumming and Supple: ‘Fo wanted us not to use the translation from the London production. Along with Joan Holden and the People’s Translation Service, we have been working on a more idiomatic, American version, which we think he’ll like’ (quoted in Weiner, 1979: 22). And this is the comment of a critic: ‘There are a few references in the script that might be considered too typically Italian, but the version presented here ably makes the transition to the American idiom.’ (Weiner, 1979: 12) The ‘version’ is praised by the reviewer because it sounds American enough, although we are reminded that it still contains aspects which appear excessively Italian from an American perspective.

The multiple translation of We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!, the combination of a British text with an American one, as well as being Fo’s request, has to do with the target theatrical system and with the tendency to adapt texts written in British English to ensure that they appear and sound American to local audiences. British adaptations are not well perceived by American critics and directors due to the differences between British and American English. This is the view of Norma Saldivar, director for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and Madison Civic Center, who directed a student production of Ron Davis’s translation, entitled We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1998. She argues that more often than not American directors are forced to use British translations of foreign plays simply because American translations are not available.³ Hence they find themselves dealing with texts that linguistically do not work on the American stage because British English often sounds awkward, and in some cases funny to American ears. Such an approach towards British translations is confirmed by the fiasco of the American premiere of Eduardo De Filippo’s Filumena Marturano, based on an English version by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.⁴ The production was badly received and one of the aspects of the show held responsible for its failure was the British English of the translation. Critics’ comments indicated that the language of Hall and Waterhouse’s adaptation had not been Americanised and their negative reaction to the use of British terms showed that the language of the adaptation affected, to a certain extent, American responses to the play.⁵

Needless to say, linguistic divergencies represent one among a number of obstacles for a British translation to be staged in the United States, although it might be the most obvious and more easily perceived by audiences and critics. Among other things, a British translation bears the weight of cultural and above all political differences between the two countries which inevitably affect its transposition on the American stage. When staged in the United States it might lose its efficacy and relevance because some of its cultural and political references are lost on American audiences or because those references acquire a different value affecting the reception of a play. Particularly in the case of Fo and Rame’s theatre since translators and theatre practitioners, in their attempt to reproduce the political function of their plays, need to insert references to political and social issues of the receiving society. One of the consequences of such obstacles is that directors have to adapt the translation to an American context and therefore productions of foreign plays in the United States can often be based on translations of translations, as in the above-mentioned example of We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!. This means that extra layers of interpretation are added to the already complex process of translation, but without being based on the source text.

Furthermore, the vagueness of the terms adopted to define translations of Fo and Rame’s theatre texts is determined by the peculiarity of theatre practices and can be explained to a certain extent as a result of the tendency to justify a free approach to foreign texts, which seems to be tolerated more easily in translation of plays. A translation of a novel, which cuts out large passages of the source text, moves others and makes the language much more vulgar, as in the case of Gavin Richards’s version of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, would probably not be as easily accepted as a translation of that particular novel by that particular author. Marvin Carlson, commenting on the attitude of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller, who took legal action against companies which modified their texts, states that all such efforts at controlling the libidinal flow of performance have failed, leaving intact a more basic tradition according to which dramatic scripts have always been cut, elaborated, or modified according to these exigencies of the performance situation (Carlson, 1999: 115). The range of such exigencies is incredibly vast. It can go from the need to adapt the linguistic medium of the foreign text to the limits imposed by the cast of the theatre company performing the play, to the physical constraints of the stage, and so on. Moreover one cannot deny that the ephemeral nature of theatre, and in particular of the language of theatre texts, which needs to be altered to travel not only between cultures, but also within the same society from one period to another, appear to justify their continuous rewriting. Hence interpreters of Fo and Rame’s plays tend to base the legitimacy of their reading on the necessity to update theatre texts according to new audiences and new contexts of performance.

However, even before they are transposed to foreign cultures, Fo and Rame’s theatre texts are constantly modified according to audience reactions and the political events that they document. There are several versions of most of their plays and this complicates even further the process of translation and production of their work outside Italy. For example, when Mitchell translated Mum’s Marijuana is the Best (La marijuana della mamma é la piú bella), he was asked to work from a tape recording of Fo and Rame’s most recent performance because it represented the most up-to-date version of the play (Mitchell, 1999). During Fo and Rame’s visit to the United States in October 2000, Rame performed Sesso, grazie tanto per gradire in Italian with English surtitles based on Jenkins’s translation, Sex? Thanks, Don’t Mind if I Do! Jenkins’s translation, which was only a few months old, needed to be updated since it included parts of the monologue that Rame had already cut in her constant editing of the text (Jenkins, 2000).

Ed Emery’s commitment to Fo and Rame’s theatre and his translations represent an exception to the above-mentioned practice of adapting their plays. He explains on his web site devoted to Fo and Rame that ‘In translating these plays, I do not usually adapt them. I seek to stay as close as possible to the original Italian, while at the same time creating good performance pieces.’⁶ He has translated several plays, some of which have been published: Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1992), Mistero Buffo (1988) and One was Nude and One Wore Tails (1992) by Methuen; The Pope and the Witch and The First Miracle of the Boy Jesus by Oberon (1994). His aim is to make all his unpublished translations available as part of his archive and to provide ‘complete performance texts on-line.’ Emery has received the same treatment as other translators who have provided literal translations of Fo and Rame’s plays. His translation of The Pope and the Witch, analysed in chapter three, was adapted by Andy de la Tour, who does not speak Italian. The production was first staged at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and then moved to London in 1992. Emery demanded a higher percentage of royalties for the London production, which was denied him. Furthermore, as Emery explained when I interviewed him in 1998, the problem with that translation was that by mistake he had been given an earlier version of the play rather than the one published by Einaudi. This created misunderstandings and Fo and Rame criticised his translation.

The cases analysed so far are examples of how the translation of the dramatic text is influenced by target theatrical systems and they show the complex mechanisms of interpretation to which Fo and Rame’s plays are subject starting from the written text. But we have only begun to unfold one among several components of the overall performance text, which is even more clearly shaped by theatrical traditions and acting styles. For example, one aspect of the British, as well as American, theatrical system representing an obstacle to the stagings of Fo and Rame’s work is actor training, which is radically different from the kind of training predominant in Italy. One major problem for English-speaking actors is that of conveying physical rhythms when performing Fo and Rame’s plays. The principles on which Fo and Rame’s theatre is founded are exactly the opposite of those informing the Stanislavskyan approach, which gives priority to an actor’s psychological interpretation of a character. When Fo and Rame’s plays are staged in the United Kingdom and the United States actors and directors tend to interpret them from a naturalistic perspective. This is a central issue which largely affects the staging and therefore the reception of Fo and Rame’s theatre, as will be further shown. According to Saldivar (2000), given the strong influence of realism in American acting training, actors tend to shy from political theatre because they do not want to be a vehicle for political ideas and ideals. She argues that American actors are too accustomed to psychological interpretation to perform in a play which, in their view and experience, is didactic and does not allow them to develop their interpretation in realistic terms. This means that it might be difficult to find American actors willing to interpret Fo and Rame’s work and with the adequate training to do so.

At the same time, there has been a tendency, in a number of cases, to accentuate the intensity of speeches and dialogues in Fo and Rame’s plays, to emphasise the exuberance of the Latin temperament of the characters. This is the result produced on stage of a cultural framework, i.e. the Anglo-American interpretation of Italian culture. In other words, it is the theatrical reflection, the visual rendering of the way Italians are perceived in British and American society. As Fo argues, caricatured images of Italians are widespread: ‘Everywhere I go I see Italians with moustaches and sideburns, rings on their fingers and white shoes. It’s as though all English plays were performed by men in bowler hats’ (quoted in Edwardes, 1992). This is one of the main aspects of what I call stage representations of immigrants, i.e. theatrical interpretations of foreign cultures in English-speaking cultures, a point to which I will come back later.

Acting style on the one hand, and cultural images on the other, or better the combination of both, largely affect the transposition of Fo and Rame’s plays into English. In this sense, British and American stagings of their theatre testify to t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Transposing Theatre across Cultures
• 2 Staging Political Theatre
• 3 Fo and Rame on the British Stage
• 4 Fo and Rame on the American Stage
• 5 Fo and Rame’s Theatre Today
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index