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Monday 1 December 2003
TRANSCRIPT
From Mourning Becomes Electra to The Vagina Monologues via Hamlet, sign language interpreters Peter Llewellyn Jones and Hetty May Bailey who explain to Mark Lawson the tricks of the trade including how to sign the tricky words.
LAWSON
But first how would you speak these famous words without opening your mouth?
READING
To be or not to be, that is the question.
A Shakespearean soliloquy so familiar that most of the audience will start to hear it before it's spoken. But what if you can't hear it? A sign language interpreter standing at the side of the stage during a play or an opera, has become a familiar sight in theatres. Last week at the end of the National Theatre production of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra I wondered what the four and a half hour drama, physically exhausting for actors and emotionally gruelling for audiences, must be like for a signer required to translate three long acts of high flown rhetoric in American vernacular.
On a pervious occasion watching the feminist spectacular The Vagina Monologues I reflected on how the system of communication for the deaf would cope with an evening which includes dozens of euphemisms for the female genitals. So I spoke to Peter Llewellyn Jones who will interpret the signed production of Mourning Becomes Electra at the National in January and to Hetty May Bailey who's signed many modern plays, including the Vagina Monologues.
I started by given Shakespearean examples to both - how would Peter Llewellyn Jones deal with that most famous of Hamlet's speeches - To be or not to be?
LLEWELLYN JONES
The problem with British sign language, as with other spoken languages, there is no verb to be, so the whole of that speech, well there's virtually lines of it anyway, don't come across. I think this is something that deaf people have when they go to the theatre, what we try is to give them a parallel experience, it can't possibly be the same experience. When those lines come out on stage, hearing people in the audience will recognise them immediately and will actually judge the production and also the performance of that actor by the way that speech is delivered. Well a deaf person has no notion of that as a famous speech in the English language and as there is no verb to be you can't sign it in the same way. So you end up doing a sort of a will it or won't it type of interpretation.
LAWSON
But soft what light through yonder window breaks.
Now it looked to me and I know nothing about this, it looked to me as if you were doing the shape of a window.
BAILEY
I think that was probably the light through.
LAWSON
So the window is a hand coming down like a blind or a shutter?
BAILEY
That particular one was but what would normally happen is it would have to be visual to the actual stage that I was on.
LAWSON
That's interesting. So you're picking up on the stage set?
BAILEY
In that particular instance I am because you mentioned windows but basically you are always translating the meaning not the actual words, you're not really transliterating because you've always got to carry the meaning. And it may not always be the same every time because I don't have a signscript in my head, I start the play - I've never signed it before - I will do the preparation, concentrate on the meaning, look at the technical aspects, because sometimes it's very hard to translate, you may have three or four people talking at the same time, talking very quickly one after the other, you've got to decide what you can sign and what you can't sign. You cannot sign as fast as speech, definitely. So you've got to keep the thread of the meaning throughout the whole of the play.
LLEWELLYN JONES
You can't drop out of character when you're interpreting either a play or an opera, you have to stay in character.
LAWSON
And so - it's interesting you talk about being in character - so do you think I'm Hamlet at this point, I am Laertes.
LLEWELLYN JONES
Yes you do because what you're trying to do is reflect that performance on that night. Now bearing in mind that the audience will come along and pay to see the actor doing it and not you, so there's no way that I would try and pretend I was Ian McKellen but I have to reflect the tension, the energy, the way a line is being said, the drama of it if you like and that performance. And so one does has to take on certain elements of the characterisation to find an equivalence for the way something's being said, the way you sign it.
BAILEY
You can't become the character but I think you do need to be able to separate characters. And I think if you probably don't have the acting skills I think that would be very, very difficult. You sometimes see signed performances where the interpreter's translating and it's very linear and the deaf people can't always distinguish between characters. And we do use role shift to signify that somebody else is speaking, however, it can be quite bland, you literally shift - you can shift your body, some people nod to signify the end of the sentence or a clause and you can also show that you're asking questions and so on, so you can tell the difference between a question and a statement. But I think if you don't have those acting skills it's hard to convey the actual characters are actually different people.
LAWSON
And when in modern plays if we talk about that, in David Mammot, for example, or other contemporary writers, where a line might - and I can't - and let alone sign language I can't say it in words on Radio 4 - but the kind of line which is - Go f… yourself you f…. c… - which occurs quite a lot in David Mammot for example, what do you do with something like that?
LLEWELLYN JONES
Well you can swear just as effectively in sign language as you can in spoken English and one does, if that's in the play then one comes out with equivalent swear words or swear signs. The only problem one has it that anything of a sexual nature, and particularly some of the swear words, in sign language - sign language generally tends to be quite explicit, they're either based on sort of a pantomimic or fairly iconic and one does - I'm doing a David Hare play for example, when a particularly awkward line came out and the whole of the audience, you could see the attention switched to the interpreter to see what the interpreter's going to do with the line. So yes there are some problems with some of the swear words.
LAWSON
And slang is another interesting area. Now you have done the Vagina Monologues, we'd probably only get away with this on radio, very many interesting questions arise here. In that play they go into some of the many, many euphemisms, variants, for the word vagina. Now how do you do that because I don't even know what it would be in sign language but there presumably aren't a string of variants as there are in spoken English?
BAILEY
Well, there may not be as many as in the Vagina Monologues but I think for most of us we hadn't heard most of them anyway to be honest and I had to do some research. So in the same way you create slang in spoken language you can create slang in sign language.
LAWSON
But if you're inventing on the night how can you be sure that - you can't be sure that in fact they understand it can you.
BAILEY
That's exactly right but it's the same with hearing people. When they said, for example, matchbox - did hearing people know what that meant? But you're also signing around the genital area as well, you've already explained what you're doing, so all those signs that are still in that area and you say these are labels, these are names.
LAWSON
And actors they clearly, some of them, some mumble, it's become a characteristic among younger actors and also when they're trying an accent - if they're English doing American - I as a member of the audience have had the experience of thinking I'm not really sure what that line was, now for you that's presumably quite serious?
LLEWELLYN JONES
Yeah it is very serious. But one just has to live with it really. Hopefully I know the play well enough to be able to anticipate what's coming, I certainly don't learn them - I don't know all the lines. But I should be able to anticipate and if I really can't hear something then I just have to make something up because I can't stop, because that's too distracting. So there are occasions when I've made up whole chunks of text and hopefully nobody really has noticed.
LAWSON
And four and a quarter hours of Mourning Becomes Electra, which is virtually all dialogue and pretty intense dialogue, I mean I assume that will be physically exhausting for you?
LLEWELLYN JONES
Yeah, and mentally more than physically. People wonder if your arms ache - they don't - signing is quite natural, it's a bit like talking in terms of it's a natural thing. But it's really the brain power of having to simultaneously interpret for that length of time. Research shows or suggests that interpreters make errors after about half an hour or so, well I think doing a performance is slightly different in that there's an adrenaline thing going on, it is actually a performance, you're interpreting spoken dialogue rather than read conference papers. But it is taxing mentally and the other thing that hurts are your feet after standing that long still.
LAWSON
Peter Llewellyn Jones and Hetty May Bailey.
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