Between Performative and Performance: Translation and Theatre in the Canadian/Quebec Context

• Published in: Modern drama 2000-09, Vol.43 (3), p.327-358
• Main Author: Godard, Barbara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0026-7694; 1712-5286
• DOI: 10.3138/md.43.3.327

Translation and theatre. The relations between these two spheres of activity are fraught, embedded as they are in profound contradictions generated by the long-standing tension between literal and figurative that haunts all representation with the paradox of the unlike likeness. The representational paradox informs the (im)possibility of translation within theories of equivalency and fidelity even as it fosters an understanding of theatre as event, albeit as simulation. What emerges as an issue in both spheres of representation is the problematic relation of truth-telling to action. Does truth inhere in repetition? How does sign relate to event? Beyond the complications within each of these systems of signification, the contradiction complicates any theorization of the relation between them, especially of translation in theatre. Translation is increasingly cast in the metaphor of theatre: for instance, Hans Sahl, a theoretician of theatre, writes that "[t]ranslating is staging a play in another language". Conversely, metaphors of translation are frequently used to describe performance of a text: Pirandello rages about the pain' he feels when attending rehearsal where the "translation [of his text] into material reality" does not correspond to his own conception. In this essay, I want to explore these entangled practices through the categories of the performative and performance that, within the so-called "linguistic turn" and a subsequent "cultural tum" (both aspects of a semiotic tum), have introduced paradigms for the discursive constitution of reality and, conversely, for the non-verbal unfolding of social behaviours. I shall then follow their turns and twists in some cases of French to English translation for the theatre in the Canadian/Quebec context.