Writing Samples
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FALLEN WOMEN
Below is a verse translation of 18th Century German tragic drama prepared for Voilà Festival production, Fallen Women. In the excerpt below from Lessing's Emilia Galotti the title character confesses to her mother CLAUDIA that the Prince seduced her while at prayer. Emilia's father later kills her for the shame brought on his name. A feature of the genre is the irrruption of tragic forces into the lives of ordinary citizens. Lessing's unusual rhythms and punctuation have been preserved as this is he shows Emilia's perceived fall out of sanity and into sin through erotic contact.
CLAUDIA
I thought that you were in church –
EMILIA
And so I was. But what, to sin, are church and altar? Oh, mother!
(Throwing herself into her mother's arms)
CLAUDIA
Speak, daughter! Put my fears to rest. What happened in that holy place?
What could be so dreadful?
EMILIA
Never should my devotion have been more intense – ardent – than it was today; and never was it less than it should have been.
CLAUDIA
We are human, Emilia. The gift of prayer is not always at our command. To heaven, though, the desire to pray is like to prayer.
EMILIA
And so to sin is its desire.
CLAUDIA
But to sin is not what my Emilia desired...
EMILIA
No, mother; so low Grace did not let me stoop. But other vices may, against our wills, make us their accomplices.
CLAUDIA Compose yourself! Collect your thoughts as best you can. Tell me at once what happened.
EMILIA
Further from the altar than usually I would – for I was late – I’d just gone down on bended knee. Had just begun to lift my heart: when close behind me something took its place. So close behind! I could not move forwards, neither to the side – much as I wanted to; for fear another - in their devotion - would disturb me in mine. Devotion! This was my worst fear. But, it was not long until I heard, quite close to my ear - after a deep sigh - not the name of a Saint - the name - do not be angry, mother - the name of your own daughter! - My name! – Oh, that loud thunders had prevented me from hearing more! – It spoke of beauty, of love – it claimed, that this day, that should make my happiness, would make him otherwise - would decide his misery forever. It conjured me that I must hear all this. But I did not look about me; I wanted to make out that I’d not heard it. What else could I do? – Beg my guardian angel strike me deaf, and thus for ever more? – This I begged; the only thing I could beg. – Time came at last to pick myself up again. The Holy office ended, I trembled to turn round, I trembled to behold him, who could permit himself this sacrilege. And then I turned, then I beheld him.
​
CLAUDIA
Who, daughter?
​
EMILIA
Guess, mother; guess – I thought the earth would swallow me – Himself.
​
CLAUDIA Who himself?
​
EMILIA
The Prince!
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Trading Brass
This is a scene from my translation of the Messingkauf Dialogues (Dialoge aus dem Messingkauf).
In this metatheatrical play by Bertolt Brecht, a philosopher enters a theatre and tells the actor, actress and dramaturg onstage that he is there to find out what it is to be human. As they discuss how a new kind of theatre can be created, the personal relationships between the characters are revealed and a stagehand takes down the set of Hamlet behind them - a ritual dismantling of the conventional theatre Brecht seeks to overthrow. This translation was prepared in Moscow as part of a project with actors of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) to create a contemporary adaptation of Brecht's original.
PHILOSOPHER
When we observe pain on the stage, and immediately empathize, there is within this observing also our immediate observation of it. We are full of pain, but at the same observe this pain – our own – as if we it weren’t ours, so that we are not completely dissolved in pain, but something in us stays firm. Pain is the enemy of thought. Pain chokes on thought and is hostile to it.
ACTRESS:
There can be a desire – the desire to cry.
PHILOSOPHER
Crying is not so much an expression of pain, as its resolution. Lamentation, in sounds – or better still in words – is the sign of a great liberation, for the sufferer is beginning to produce something. He is already mixing the suffering with the counting of blows, he’s already making something out of total devastation. Contemplation has set in.
DRAMATURG
At their best, your purposes would match the type of representation used by researchers to describe the customs and habits of tribal societies. In dispassionate tones, you would describe the most excited war dances. But there is a distinction when the representation is an embodied one. Given that certain movements are difficult to make absent of emotion, how should the performer represent these characteristics?
PHILOSOPHER
Someone who has observed with astonishment the table manners, etiquette, and love lives of tribal peoples would also be capable of reporting our own table manners, etiquette and love lives with astonishment.
The soulless conventional man always lights on the same drivers throughout history - his own. And only those as far as he knows them - so not that that far. He drinks coffee in the afternoon, is jealous of his wife, wants to get on in the world, and does so better or worse as the case may be. “Man does not change”, he says, and if he’s less attractive to his wife than he was 20 years ago, then all 45-year-olds must be less attractive to their wives than they were at 25.
“Love has always been around”, he says, and chooses not to wonder what might once have been understood and practised in that name. He changes himself, only as does a pebble in a stream, worn smooth by the the other pebbles, and like a pebble in a stream, he moves only backwards and forwards. And because he pursues nothing, he could in fact do anything “in the right circumstances”, conquer the world like Caesar, for example. Like Lear he has reaped ingratitude. He has renounced his wife as Anthony did Cleopatra, and has plagued her more or less as Othello did his. He hesitates, like Hamlet, to wipe out injustice with blood, and his friends are all of a type with Timon’s. He is thoroughly like all the world, and all the world is like him. Distinctions do not exist for him: for him all is the same. In all people, he sees people – he, who is nothing but the singular of the plural, people. And so, he infects everything he comes into contact with, with his spiritual destitution.