Abstract
Of all art forms, theatre exists in a uniquely transcultural space, traversing written texts and oral performance, drawing on a range of communities in both its production and its audiences, and often foregrounding these broader theoretical issues in the productions themselves. In this paper, I discuss a youth theatre production that I have directed, which staged these cross-cultural dynamics as one of its central features: a bilingual production of Romeo and Juliet. Situated in Ottawa, a city on the border of Ontario and Quebec and between anglophone and francophone Canada, this production both tapped into and addressed the bilingual relations which have long dominated Canadian historical and cultural discussions. The production was performed in September 2022 by The Company of Adventurers, a young people’s theatre ensemble that I founded and have directed for the past 13 years. Featuring teenaged students from both Ontario and Quebec, this production drew on the unique potential of its cast in order to reframe the play in transcultural terms. Our production offered a performative reflection on the problems and possibilities of bilingual cultures by transposing the speeches of the Capulets into standard French and presenting various levels of bilingual competence by different characters, including characters who speak in “joual” (a local dialect of Montreal French) and “franglais” (a mixture of French and English). In doing so, the production aligned the tensions between the two leading families in Verona with the longer historical tensions between French and English Canada.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Traveling Concepts: The Transfer and Translation of Ideas in the Humanities
KEYWORDS
Theatre, Shakespeare, Translation, Transcultural Relations, English/French Canada
