Although probably not planned this way, the only things visible
when the house lights dim at the beginning of “La Casa de
Rigoberta Mira al Sur” (“The House of Rigoberta Looks
South”) are the lit screen suspended above the stage on which
English translations of the Nicaraguan play performed in Spanish
will appear and the familiar green exit signs that line the
interior of the Freud Playhouse.
In case you were wondering, language is going to be an issue
here, and sadly, much of it gets lost in the supertitled
translation.
The play, rich in repetition and poetic phrases, sounds
beautiful, as only dialogue spoken in a romance language can.
Unfortunately, the meanings of many of those phrases never appear
on the screen, immediately prohibiting any English-speaking
audience member from fully understanding the play.
On the surface, that might seem an unfair critique, as the rate
of words being spoken, composed mostly of long and quickly-spoken
monologues, makes it nearly impossible to project every translated
word. But the issue of a faulty translation extends beyond the
literal.
“La Casa de Rigoberta Mira al Sur” doesn’t
have a plot so much as it has a feel or tone. And that mood is
directly related to contemporary Nicaraguan social history and the
aftermath of the 1978-1979 Sandinistas socialist revolution, which
may not be common knowledge to many outside of Central and South
America.
Still, there’s a foundation for a plot. A revolutionary
couple sees its daughter, Rigoberta, die in the conflict, and her
spirit continues to live in the couple’s house, along with
that of the family’s dead grandmother.
Meanwhile, the couple continues to live on, growing further and
further apart as time passes and times change. The husband abandons
the socialist cause and embraces capitalism. The wife, decades
afterward, still cannot cope with the death of her only child.
Because both the husband and wife are now spiritually empty
individuals, the spirit of Rigoberta directs many of their actions,
exposing the couple’s inevitable collapse following the death
of political and personal idealism.
The couple stands for much of contemporary Nicaragua, but the
play treats their isolating and fallen state so intimately that
anyone not already familiar with the Sandinista revolution will
have trouble understanding what the husband and wife are arguing
about, or why they’re arguing in the first place.
Perhaps that’s just something missed in the English
supertitles. Or in what’s considered fair-game common
knowledge in American culture. Whatever the reason, there’s a
disconnection between the intimacy with which the actors treat
their play and the intimacy with which the play reaches the
audience.
It has nothing to do with the actors, or even the play itself,
but rather the necessity of that pesky white screen above the
stage, which translates only part of what’s said. The rest of
it probably makes all the difference.
-Jake Tracer