Gorgeous Avatar by Jules Horne

Avatar on Tour - Strathpeffer

Strathpeffer's show is being staged as a joint venture with Eden Court Theatre, currently working in exile with a massive refurbishment underway at their home base in Inverness. Great news for the Traverse crew, as the Eden Courtiers are on hand with expert help for the get-in and get-out. It makes a massive difference - everything gets done far more quickly.

The venue is the lovely spa pavilion, with a high sloping roof which is a challenge for the lighting crew. Director Philip Howard arrives with a group of Japanese visitors - two theatre producers and a translator - who are in Scotland to hear two Japanese plays which are being staged in English at the Traverse as part of the Playwrights in Partnership scheme. Taki, the translator, is passionate about Scottish drama, and has already worked on Gregory Burke's Gagarin Way and David Harrower's Knives in Hens. He's prepared a rough version of Avatar in Japanese so that the producers know what's going on. For the first time on the tour, I've the chance to talk about writing. I discover that Japanese translations make longer plays than their English originals, and have to be cut. And in Japanese, verb negation comes much later in the sentence structure than it does in English. That's interesting for a playwright - it would have a big impact on rhythm, on how a sentence might play. Language barriers or not, Avatar seems to get its message across. And Strathpeffer may be a gentle sort of tourist haunt, but this audience is one of the loudest of the tour. Go figure.

posted by Jules Horne @ 6/09/2006 01:32:00 PM