Sanaz Toossi’s English takes place in an English language learning classroom in Iran. It is part of a lineage of plays exploring language barriers, creatively finding ways to either remove or emphasize the language barrier for the audience. In the play, the teacher, Marjan, requires her students to speak English in the classroom for proper immersion, so the audience usually hears the characters speaking a language in which they have varying degrees of proficiency. In a note prefacing the published script, Toossi writes:
In the world of the play, when a character is speaking English, the audience will be hearing accented English. In the world of the play, when a character is speaking Farsi, the audience will be hearing unaccented English.
In the script, spoken English is bolded, whereas Farsi is unbolded. Additionally, the use of brackets indicates what words the character is looking for but might not have in their new vocabulary. For instance, in the opening scene:
GOLI: Okay, so I– English okay here I go–
(holds up an eyebrow pencil)
This is pencil.
Pencil for eyebrow.
I want [thick, glam] big eyebrow but I take too much hair when I am young.
This pencil is for make not real hairs.
You do like (She haphazardly fills in one of her eyebrows.)
Uh. Okay.
This is not good I need mirror.
MARJAN: You need a mirror.
GOLI: I need a mirror oh my god this is super boring I’m so sorry.
This stylistic choice accentuates how comfortable the play’s characters feel when speaking in their native language, as opposed to the language they are in the process of learning. In this way, English is in conversation (so to speak) with a host of plays that engage with language barriers as subject matter. The plays discussed in this article utilize a variety of theatrical conventions—from slang to nonsense to a shadow-cast of sign language interpreter-actors—to convey the subjective experience of understanding or not understanding a language, effectively placing the audience in the shoes of the characters.
The Playful Approach
Vietgone by Qui Nguyen
Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone is a stylish, irreverent, foulmouthed, and action-packed retelling of how the playwright’s parents met as Vietnamese refugees in an Arkansas relocation camp after fleeing the fall of Saigon. At the start of the play, an actor playing the playwright comes onstage to give a short speech on the syntax of the characters.
PLAYWRIGHT: This is a story about a completely made-up man named Quang.
QUANG: S’up, bitches.
PLAYWRIGHT: …And a completely not-real woman named Tong.
TONG: Whoa, there’s alotta white people up in here.
[…]
PLAYWRIGHT: [O]n the occasion – when it occurs – that an American character should appear, they will sound something like this:
AMERICAN GUY: Yee-haw! Get’er done! Cheeseburger, waffle fries, cholesterol!
PLAYWRIGHT: Spouting American nonsense which sounds very American but yet incredibly confusing for anyone not natively from here.
The choice to use this convention has two distinct effects. It allows the (presumably majority English-speaking) audience to follow the story while honoring how central language, communication, and identity is to this immigrant story. Secondly, by infusing the dialogue with slang, the characters immediately become more recognizable and familiar to audiences. By extension, the American Guy’s nonsensical, “stereotypically American” speech forces the (again, presumably majority English-speaking) audience to reckon with the way foreigners often are depicted in American media.
Nguyen’s irreverent depiction of the language barrier grows finely detailed as the story goes on and the characters become more proficient at their second language—for example, in this scene where Tong goes on a date with an American man, Bobby, who is trying his best to learn her language:
TONG: Your Vietnamese is getting better.
BOBBY: Botanical.
TONG: What?
BOBBY: Barometer.
TONG: Maybe I spoke too soon.
BOBBY: No. Trying to find right word. I find you very…beautiful tonight.
TONG: Thank you.
BOBBY: Seeing you for original time was love in eyeball originals.
Theatre artist and translator Arlene Martínez-Vázquez writes in HowlRound Theatre Commons that Vietgone’s approach uses:
[B]roken syntax to show, not only the different linguistic structures of Vietnamese versus English, but also the inadequacy that is inherent in trying to speak a language that is not your own. It shows the effort English language learners exert even when we get things wrong and the vulnerability we step into in doing so.
With this humorous yet empathetic approach, Nguyen is able to convey the frustration and joy of living in a country where the dominant language is not your own.
Translation and Accessibility
I Was Most Alive with You by Craig Lucas
The premiere production of Craig Lucas’s play I Was Most Alive with You, in which characters use varying degrees of American Sign Language to communicate, incorporated supertitles (projected translations) along with additional accessibility practices to tell its story. The play, a family drama about Knox, a Deaf son of hearing parents, contains detailed notes from the playwright on how to incorporate accessibility artistically into its staging:
Dialogue in bold provides the actor/character with a choice of signing, speaking, or a combination (SimCom). Since each character has a different level of fluency in ASL, an interplay between these two languages can be useful.
[…]
I Was Most Alive With You was created to be performed by Deaf and hearing actors for Deaf and hearing audiences. In the original productions, shadow actors augmented the principal cast, providing ASL translations of all dialogue. Projected English translations were provided for lines performed solely in ASL. Some sound cues were projected.
The published script uses italics to delineate when characters are speaking or signing:
FARHAD: Can I ask your parents for their blessing?
KNOX: Not until you’re sober. Implant?
(Farhad has no intention of bringing along his cochlear implant.)
KNOX: YES. You’ll need it.
FARHAD: No, I can–
(Farhad indicates vestigial hearing on one side.)
KNOX: Well, I think you will. Please?
(Farhad puts on the implant.)
KNOX: Is it even on ?
FARHAD: I won’t need it!
In an interview about the rehearsal process, Sabrina Dennison, the director of artistic sign language for the production, noted that “[t]he shadow actors will all be signing fully in American Sign Language, while the characters in the play will sign as their characters would (some fluently, some haltingly, some signing and speaking).” Each of the characters has a different level of fluency in ASL—as noted in one review, “For complicated reasons, Pleasant has refused to learn ASL, and Knox’s not-quite-boyfriend Farhad—who’s deaf with a small ‘d’ […] knows it but won’t speak it.” Knox is big-D Deaf, and prefers to sign although he can speak, but his ability to sign is suddenly and violently altered when his hands are injured in an accident. Incorporating supertitles and shadow actors gives d/Deaf and hearing audiences alike the opportunity to understand precisely what the characters are saying—and to understand how they feel when their ability to communicate is limited.
Communicating in a Second Language
The Band's Visit
Music and lyrics by David Yazbek
Book by Itmar Moses
The Band’s Visit is a musical about a band of Egyptian musicians that is on their way to a concert in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, but accidentally ends up spending one day and night in the tiny town of Bet Hatikvah—a misunderstanding that occurs because a bus station employee mishears the musicians’ Egyptian accents.
The musical opens with the characters conversing in Arabic in an Israeli airport bus station as two soldiers walk by:
TEWFIQ: Hooma el mefrood ya’abloona imta?
SIMON: Kano el mafrood yekoono hena hidaashar we nuss–
CAMAL (looking at the soldiers): Maybe we should speak English.
Throughout the show, the Egyptian and Israeli characters use English as a common language to communicate, while occasionally speaking to one another in their native languages, as in this scene where clarinetist Simon talks about a concerto he is trying to finish composing, and ends up in the middle of an argument with married couple Itzik and Iris:
ITZIK: You know, once, when I was child, I miss my own birthday. My mother is make…a party? And while I wait, I climb a tree. And it is so…nice up there. The wind. The sky. I don’t want to come down. The whole village is look for me. I don’t come. I hear people call my name. I don’t answer. I stay all day. I miss my birthday. Maybe, for you, not finish is like this. You are in the tree. You don’t want to come down.
IRIS: No. He don’t stay up there because it’s so nice. He hide in his tree. Because he is afraid of his birthday. Afraid to grow up. Ani yotzet.
(Iris goes to grab her coat and heads for the door. Itzik follows her.)
ITZIK: But…we have guests.
IRIS: Ah, ken, nachon. Very sorry, but I go now.
[…]
SIMON: Would you like us to go?
IRIS: No it’s not you, it’s this boy. Who is still up in his tree. All his life, up in his tree, and never coming down!
(Now Itzik switches to Hebrew for privacy…)
ITZIK: Iris, tagidi li, ma cara–
(…But by now Iris has gotten going in English. Thus:)
IRIS: No! I don’t know now what I saw in you! I don’t know if I have anything left for you in my heart!
Throughout the musical, the characters try to find ways to connect even when language feels insufficient. In one song, café owner Dina listens to bandleader Tewfiq as he sings to her in Arabic, finding meaning in a language she doesn’t speak:
DINA:
IS THIS A HYMN? IS THIS A LOVE SONG?
SOMETHING ANCIENT BY A POET, MAYBE HAFIZ? MAYBE RUMI?
IS HE SINGING ABOUT TWO HEARTS SEARCHING IN THE DARKNESS?
OR IS HE SINGING ABOUT FISHING?
In all these plays and productions, there is a shared theme: how the characters try their hardest to understand one another and to make themselves understood, even when separated by language differences. In English, Toossi’s writing makes the switch between languages palpable onstage, dramatizing the personal shift each character experiences when they go from Farsi to English, showing what they lose and gain by speaking a second language. As you experience English, we invite you to contemplate the impact that proficiency in a language (or multiple languages) has had on your own life.
References
Collins-Hughes, Laura. “7 Roles. 14 Actors. 2 Languages. 1 Stage.” The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2018.
Holdren, Sara. “Craig Lucas’s I Was Most Alive With You Aims High.” Vulture, 24 Sept. 2018.
Lucas, Craig. I Was Most Alive With You. Dramatists Play Service, 2022.
Martínez-Vázquez, Arlene. “Vietgone, Hamilton, and the Decolonization of American Theatre.” Howlround, 15 Mar. 2017.
Moses, Itamar. Yazbek, David. The Band’s Visit. Theatre Communications Group, 2018.
Nguyen, Qui. Vietgone. Samuel French, 2018.
Toosi, Sanaz. English. Samuel French, 2023.