Chatting with John Freedman

John Freedman, an American-born translator who lives and works in Russia, spoke to my Russian Theatre and Politics class today about his experiences both in Russia and with translating some of the plays we're studying.

With regards to choosing the title for the play Frozen in Time, a modern day Russian Romeo and Juliet, Freedman noted that the original Russian title, Exhibits, didn't exactly do the piece justice.

"It's interesting, the power of choices," he said. "'Exhibits' doesn't really give you a feeling. It doesn't give you anything. A title should point you in a certain direction, make a suggestion. I thought 'Frozen in Time' sounded much more influential. It implies not moving on, losing something that is part of human experience."

After seeing one of the first performances of Frozen in Time in Moscow, Freedman left disappointed and confused.

"For me, it lost a lot of course," he said. "You didn't get the way little things kind of build up and lead to the explosion. It's a difficult play to do. If I were directing it, I'd come back to this: you cannot create characters of these people. The ambiguity is very strong. You're encouraged to take sides and make judgments. If you have done that, you've started losing touch with the play. Everybody's life has its right to be expressed fully. The difficulties and conflicts we experience are legitimate. I love that ambiguity; it makes me accept everyone and everything."

Freedman also clued the class in about certain aspects of Russian culture. Infidelity, he said, while frowned upon, is not such a moral problem as it is in the United States. Gender roles that used to exist in the United States are still prevalent there, where in the most general terms, the females typically are the nurturers and the males are the protectors.

"There's a certain understanding of life that Russians have," Freedman said. "There's a sense that life itself is sacred, not the morals attached to it."

Freedman's endeavors in the emerging Russian theatre world will be transformed from page to stage this fall in the premier of the TU Theatre Department's "Russian Season," featuring several of the plays he's translated over the span of his impressive career.

For more on Freedman's experiences and life in Russia, journalism and theatre, head here.

I remain your Drama Queen.

There may be something there that wasn't there before

The Fall 2009 Season for the TU Theatre Department has just been announced. Every semester, we typically put on two large Mainstage shows, and then undergraduate students in the department direct their own shows and graduate students stage their works, usually self-written. So ideally there are four or five shows running per semester.

The fall season is introducing a foreign influence. I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but my last entry mentioned England's excellence in the art and the Russian project I'm involved in. Well, fancy that. William Shakespeare's classic love story, Romeo and Juliet, will be staged here in the fall. Usually the department does put on historical plays of some sort, like last fall's The Crucible (set in Puritan Salem) and The Piano Lesson (set in 1930s Pittsburgh). Performing Shakespeare is something Towson hasn't embraced in several years and it will take this department one step further into our historical endeavors as we bring Elizabethan Italy to the stage.

The second Mainstage show will be the Russian play Tanya, Tanya, translated by American translator John Freedman (seen on the left) and directed by Russian guest director Yury Urnov, both of whom have been actively involved in TU theatre for some time now. The show is still being adapted for performance, but the department is excited to debut this work on Towson's stage.

Another new Russian play called The Polar Truth will be staged in the structure of a performance workshop by one of the department's graduate students.

These relations with Russian theatre artists has had remarkable impact in the past few weeks and it's already spread like wildfire into the department, and hopefully it will continue to delve further into crossing cultural boundaries in the future.

--DQ