The issue of language was always the most problematic aspect of creating Orange Polar Bear. The principal practical obstacles created by the two languages are dealt with elsewhere in this exposition, as part of the discussion around equitable collaboration, but they also occupied the partners in respect of everything from how to run meetings through to contracts and agreements. Right at the heart of the project, however, was the artistic challenge - the question of the approach to take to language within the production itself, and the relationship between languages and the audiences in the two countries.
Previous Hanyong research [Wynne-Willson and Ko 2008] had covered the current state of these two audiences' attitudes to hearing and seeing work in other languages, and revealed a major imbalance. There is an obvious danger of generalisation, but there were some patterns that are clear enough to be worth relating. In Korea, NTCK have been very successful at attracting a teenage audience, and that audience is a very loyal one. Essentially their productions aimed at teenagers will sell out, whatever their form or focus. This audience is keen to go to the theatre, and relatively open to seeing work from outside Korea, and does not have an expectation of the work being aimed at or reflecting them. In recent years NTCK have had particular success in presenting work which does reflect the life of teenagers, or strike chords with them, and the response to this strain of work has been particularly positive. But across popular culture as well as within the theatre, this has always included a substantial amount of content in English. Learning English is a major part of every young Korean's education, and expectation of understanding English is built in to the criteria through which many judge success, and so on one level at least inclusion of english content is seen as positive, by parents and by teachers for example. It is not universally seen this way, however, because some will see English content within a consciously educational context as a negative, being associated with school work and duty. At the same time some English language content in popular culture has very positive associations, so the picture is complex.
In spite of these complexities of the Korean teenage audience's relationship with the English language, they are very familiar with coping with subtitles, or surtitles, and would not be expected to be put off from attending by the fact of English as part of the performance. In addition, a piece that seems to reflect their lives in any way accurately can expect a premium in response, because this will defy expectations of theatre going. Put rather simplistically - going to the National Theatre is expected to be good for you, so you are not necessarily expecting to enjoy it, or at least attending in order to enjoy it, in anything like the way you might approach popular culture.
In the UK, the experience of watching work in another language at all is a rare one for the teenage audience, who are also notoriously hard to attract to live contemporary theatre, coming in large numbers only when brought as part of school parties. Reading subtitles or surtitles is often seen as a reason for not watching films, and would undoubtedly be off-putting in relation to theatre, if it is mentioned in advance as an issue.
In addition to the difference in approach and experience, there is broadly a greater facility with reading symbols in Korea than is found in the UK, a tendency that is rooted deep in the culture of the country. Discussions with teenagers took place throughout every stage of the creation of Orange Polar Bear, in both countries, and this difference showed itself often. Presented with the title, for example, Korean young people readily offered explanations based on metaphorical reading of the meaning, or emotional response to the concepts of polar bears and the colour orange. In the UK on the other hand young people searched for literal explanation - Where is the polar bear? Why is it orange? This difference might be expected to be another factor in the responses of the audience to a play with a strong visual language and use of symbolism as part of its way of communicating.
With this idea in mind, the anxiety about the language was focused largely on the UK audience. Is it possible to create a bilingual piece that UK teenagers will come to, engage with and enjoy?
The previous Hanyong projects had found a range of approaches for the different contexts they were serving. The first project, The Bridge, had been aimed at the same audience age profile as Orange Polar Bear, and was also presented in the same form in both countries. Largely for the reasons stated above, the idea with that project had been not to involve surtitling, based on an assumption that it would prove an obstacle to the UK audience. The overall style of The Bridge was naturalistic, and the only way in which the audience understanding was directly supported was by presenting situations where translation was happening, largely through the presence of an interpreter character in some scenes. But the characters reflected the audience position on language, in that they are regularly dealing with a language they do not understand, and when they are trying to communicate across a language barrier, the meaning is often more accessible. The video extract here is a case in point, with the scene exploring the issue directly. [See Video 1] There was never any major problem with audience reading the meanings within these scenes, where a British soldier is trying to communicate with the children who are looking after him. At other points there are sections where the audience is left to make what they can of action in the 'other' language, and there was also use made of the fact that in some ways the two audiences received the story in a slightly different way. But the most regular comment for the English audience was that they were surprised by how much they had understood, and there was very little frustration, or upset about lack of surtitles.
The success of this approach in The Bridge might have been expected to lead to a similar approach with Orange Polar Bear, aimed at the same target audience, but there was a key problem which emerged as the process was underway. With The Bridge, scenes were created by English and Korean actors improvising together through a devising process. Through this, the use of language grew organically, because they needed to understand each other within the moments that they were themselves creating. That the story contained so many communications between Korean and English speakers could be seen to be a product of the devising process, rather than a previously planned approach to the language issue, and as Orange Polar Bear evolved, it became clear that two writers working intitially fairly separately, would not have the same issue to deal with, and would not solve the problem organically as they went along.
In fact the decision was made not to tackle the issue of language intially, but for the writers to be free to write as they wanted, and then the task would become one of marrying the work together into a pleasing whole, and working out then how the audience could be helped to understand. They were after all working from a shared stimulus - the series of workshops in the two countries around what it is like to be 15. But as it turned out the way of working created a language problem that was particularly thorny. The characters did not meet - at least not literally. There were two stories, and they each involved only one language. In addition, Evan's style of writing was often a character speaking a third person narrative, their own stage directions in effect.
The preferred solution was to support foreign language with a cocktail of options, using a range of conventions that had emerged from previous work, plus for the first time surtitles as part of the projection which was built into the design, plus the visual elements of that projection supporting meanings, and the context, body language, and meaning discernible from the action. One lesson which had emerged from the earlier projects was that the quality of acting overall was a key component in an audience accepting a language that they do not understand. If they are gripped by the acting, they will work to construct meaning from all the evidence available to them.
In the ensemble scenes of Orange Polar Bear, we needed the cast to augment each other's worlds, so that in William's class there are no Koreans, but up to five other British characters, and the Korean actors are therefore playing British characters that speak Korean as if speaking English. This gives the production a chance of getting across meaning in both languages. There is a little repetition in the two languages, but the principal approach is indicating what has been said in one language from the reply in the other language, or the meaning being at least broadly clear from the context. [See Video 2]
You can observe some of the stages of the evolution of this approach in the video of the work in progress version of the piece, presented at the Birmingham ASSITEJ Meeting 'On The Edge' in Birmingham. At this stage the possibility of shared narration as a means of translation was being trialled. [See video of work-in-progress ] The shared narration was also used in the full-length all-Korean version, but was abandoned in the final draft.
It was clear that there were many scenes that were wholly either in Will's or in Jiyoung's story, and needed simply to happen in their language. So surtitles became an inevitability, even if not for the whole piece. Then in keeping with the overall balance of the play, the decision was made to have surtitles for both countries the same, so that both English and Korean surtitles were projected in both countries. The design was anticipating this, and because of the need for front projection in the performance spaces, side lighting was used on stage, so that projection was properly visible. The production used projection in the end very substantially, and part of the function of the imagery, [and indeed sound track] of projection was also contributing to understanding.
Part of the logic for the different language conventions was conceptual. There is a sense in the play that these two characters separated by 6000 miles are in some way aware of each other. This connection only manifests itself in the land of the Orange Polar Bear, the land of ice. At the beginning and end of the play, Jiyoung and Will find themselves in this place, and here, they understand each other fully. [See video 3] There was some discussion about this, and a small number of the audience were unhappy with this, or found it confusing, but others accepted very fully the way that these two people are interrelated although separate, as a key representation of the way the teenagers who began the project expressed their similarities and differences and found real understanding. In this section, the audience if it only understands one of the languages cannot in fact possibly understand all that is being said, but the fact of the meeting and the fact that the characters do understand each other is the important function of the scene, and the sense of this is enough to overcome any potential frustration. We feel we understand, and that is for most people enough.
After all of the anxiety about surtitles, the end result proved much less of a barrier to understanding or enjoyment than anticipated. In Korea, where the team had not expected any problem, there was indeed no complaint from the audience about understanding or distraction. But in the UK, the indications in the collected response were in some way even more marked. There was a sense in the observations of many that the overall focus and engagement of the young audience was particularly marked. This led to the conjecture that the extra attention required to follow meaning if anything added to the commitment of the audience, given that the play had fully engaged their interest, in large part because they recognised so much in it, and that engagement and concentration were particularly strong. The overall response of young people in both countries was certainly predominantly positive. [See summary of evaluation at the Rep in the document link below] and there was very little negative comment about the use of surtitles. As with previous projects, one common reflection was on how much was understandable even without reference to them, from the 'acting' of the Korean performers.
Overall the project proved that it is perfectly possible for a play to be presented in two languages, to an audience that only understands one, in a way that they find satisfying. The range of conventions used added to the previous experience is helping to fill a toolbox of options for theatre-makers when creating work across language barriers, and demonstrating the value this holds for understanding between cultures.
References:
Wynne-Willson, P and Ko, Sun Duck The Bridge [Hanyong Publications, Birmingham 2013]
Video 1
The injured British soldier, Hugh, is getting to know the Korean children who have looked after him, in an early scene in The Bridge