An LA Times interview with playwright Rajiv Joseph, author of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” yields his very interesting thoughts on playwriting as translation. The following is an excerpt:
“Writing, it seems to me, can translate the unknown into the known, the mysterious into the lucid, the abstract into the concrete. And even if it doesn’t, a writer can try. Sometimes, however, if I’m tired, lazy, or if my brain is just too filled up with other things, I don’t try hard enough. I’d like to give you an example.
About a week after Wassan helped us through the Arabic in the script, she agreed to participate in a post-show panel discussion at the Lark Play Development Center. Besides Wassan and myself, there was a State Department official who was a former U.S. liaison to the Iraqi Parliament, and there was a journalist — the only American reporter to smuggle himself into northern Iraq via the Syrian border. Between Wassan and these two guys, I had little to say, and was simply impressed that these people had agreed to come to my play.
The audience asked a lot of questions. Near the end, one man asked a question that was both provocative and, seemingly, totally reasonable. He asked the panel, “Does Iraq still exist?”
The State Department guy went first and came to the conclusion that no, as we have understood that country, Iraq no longer exists. The journalist had his take and also concluded that Iraq had ceased to exist. The question and the responses made sense to everyone, because to all of us, Iraq was an abstraction. It was an idea. It was something we thought about, philosophized about, debated about, and it was a country that, apparently, could disappear in a flash.
The audience was satisfied, and the evening ended without Wassan or me responding at all. Because the question seemed so natural, and the answers so eloquent, I had not considered what it all may have meant to Wassan. She was horrified. Horrified at the question, at the responses, and at the very notion of sitting in a room with a group of Americans who could casually state that her country of birth, where many members of her family still lived, had ceased to exist.
She left without saying much, and even as she did, I did not totally understand the weight of her anger. But I do now, and three years later I think about that night often.
I wish I had had the wherewithal to understand how offensive the question and the answers may have been to her. I wish I had said something to the audience, or had said something to her. But I didn’t, because my mind wasn’t quick enough, and abstractions are difficult to cast aside.
Iraq exists. It’s the cradle of civilization, it’s where writing was invented, it’s where algebra was invented, it’s where they invented the wheel. And it’s a country that on March 20, 2003, was invaded by the United States although it posed no immediate threat to our national security.
I think as a playwright I’m trying to translate abstractions into some sort of emotional truth. It’s only an attempt, but I think there’s value in the attempt, and it begins with me, the playwright, and then extends to the director and the actors . . . and finally to the audience. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s helpful, to me at least, to remember that everything I think I know is subject to translation.”
Photo of Bengal Tiger by Kamil Zubrzycki, found on Pexels