There have been multiple occasions when I’ve been in attendance at theatrical events in foreign languages and still managed to understand what was transpiring onstage.
The first of these was Aristophanes’ The Frogs, presented in Greek by British students studying—yes, you guessed it—Greek. (I wrote about this in a recent blog post.) Fortunately for me, I had recently read the play in our Greek and Roman graduate seminar, and the details of the play were fresh in my mind.
A couple of years later I attended a Japanese Noh performance in Berkeley’s Greek Theater. To many in the audience seeking a cross-cultural experience, it was likely totally confusing and confounding. Granted, Noh is a bit alien to our modern sensibilities. But, being aware of the conventions of that form of Japanese theatre, as well as ancient Greek tragedy (and I maintain there are strong similarities between the two), I could follow the storyline.
And then of course there was the passion play of Oberammergau, entirely in German during the five hour presentation (with a dinner break between the two halves). They provided us with a translation so we could follow along; I glanced around and saw many people juggling these booklets and their phone flashlights—which I thought was a bit silly, since most of them were Christians coming to see the story of Jesus and really should have known what was going on. Even this fallen-away Catholic knew that!
MUSOFYR 