We, as mediating agents, must carry out an act of performative interpretation of the text and of its visual and kinetic potential so that the act of translation itself can become a multisensory experience of reflexive immersion as well as imaginative interpretation.
The first one focuses on the rhythmic power of language as both the site and the mediating channel of transformation. Just a rocking and a rocking. The wind blowing. Just a rock ing 2 and a rock ing. The wind blow ing and the birds following behind the boat. They follow whenever it go.
What is they following for , Mr. The wind s napp ing them s ails and the birds following. The birds following and sing ing and the fish swimm ing and the wind blow ing -. I feel it moving! Tante Ester : Vous le sentez M. Vous sentez ce bateau qui tangue?
Qui tangue et qui tangue. Le vent qui souffle. Il tangue et tangue. Souffle le vent et suivent les oiseaux dans le sillage du bateau. Toujours ils le suivent. Pourquoi ils le suivent, M. Le vent happe les voiles et les oiseaux suivent.
Suivent et chantent les oiseaux et nagent les poissons et souffle le vent…. Citoyen : Il bouge! Le bateau bouge! We decided to focus on rhythm and opted for an alternation of inverted syntactic order so as to create a linguistic destabilizing backwards and forwards, up and down movement.
This is all the more relevant as the text is destined to be performed in the rhythmic cadence defined by actors and stage director. The sensory dimension of language i. Both had to grapple with the rhythm of his language to stage or interpret his characters. Rashad, xxx. Aunt Ester : You see this boat, Mr.
Aunt Ester hands him the paper boat made from the Bill of Sale. You gonna take a ride in that boat […]. Eli , Solly and Black Mary Singing :. Tante Ester : Vous voyez ce bateau, M. Elle chante. Tante Ester Elle chante :. This can be done either with some surtitling device or through one of the characters repeating the message in French, before or after the sung lines, as indeed we do for the name of the ship. Since Negro spirituals, gospel and blues have been integrated into French culture, their untranslated transfer works as an easily recognizable reminder of the original tradition they come from.
Their musicality in English, their sensuous effect on the audience, add up to the sensory experience of connection with African American rhythms.
Citizen : I see the people. They chained to the boat. Aunt Ester : Them people you see got some powerful gods , Mr. God answer to the all. All the people. They need all the people. Them people you see is without God. God has beautiful splendors. Citizen : They all look like me. They all got my face! Citoyen : Je vois les gens. Tante Ester : Ces gens que vous voyez ils ont des dieux puissants, M.
Mais ils ne sont pas avec eux sur le bateau. Tous les gens. Ils ont besoin de tous les gens. Jump to ratings and reviews. Want to Read. Buy on Amazon. Rate this book. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.
Earlier in , on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history- August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2.
Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come. Plays Drama Fiction African American More Details. August Wilson 31 books followers.
August Wilson was an American playwright. His literary legacy is the ten play series, The Pittsburgh Cycle , for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel, Jr. Earlier, Wilson's maternal grandmother walked from North Carolina to Pennsylvania in search of a better life.
His mother raised the children alone by the time he was five in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at Bedford Avenue. August Kittel changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother after his father's death in His first play, Recycling , was performed for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers.
Among these early efforts was Jitney ,which he revised more than two decades later as part of his play cycle on 20th century Pittsburgh. Wilson also co-founded the Kuntu Writers Workshop to bring African-American writers together and to assist them in publication and production.
Both organizations are still active. In Wilson moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota at the suggestion of his friend director Claude Purdy, who helped him secure a job writing educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. In , he received a fellowship for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.
Wilson had a long association with the Penumbra Theatre Company of St Paul, which gave the premieres of some Wilson plays. Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary Doctor of Humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the University's Board of Trustees from until Seattle Rep would ultimately be the only theater in the country to produce all of the works in his ten-play cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned.
Wilson was married three times. His first marriage was to Brenda Burton from to They had one daughter, Sakina Ansari, born In he was married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and divorced in Wilson's third marriage was in to costume designer, Constanza Romero, with whom he had his second daughter, Azula Carmen.
Wilson reported that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer in June and been given three to five months to live. Search review text. As part of Black History Month, I wanted to include a play by August Wilson, a premier playwright who authored the Century Cycle: ten plays each focusing on one decade of the African American experience in the 20th century.
Wilson won the Pulitzer for drama for both Fences and The Piano Lesson and additional awards for his other works. Although the last play to be completed, Gem of the Ocean commences the Century Cycle by glimpsing life in s Pittsburgh. Ester keeps the paper recording her bill of sale in a drawer in her home, and Solly and Eli talk of the 62 people they delivered to safety while working on the Underground Railroad.
As senior citizens, they are experiencing a taste of freedom for the first time in their lives; however, in many regards for them, slavery times were simpler. A person was either free or a slave, yet any proud person, did not need a paper to remind him that he was free before the eyes of G-D.
It is this wisdom that Aunt Ester attempts to impart on the younger generation who was only known freedom for their entire lives.
Black Mary and Citizen Barlow seek out Ester in order to better various facets of their lives. At this time, African Americans are still grappling with life as free people. They seek jobs that are not always available to them and paid a pittance for the labor they put in, often not enough to live on. Many turn to stealing or striking on the job in hopes that future generations will enjoy more rights than they do.
This is shown through the entire play as Caesar the law abiding citizen takes on a mob of strikers at a local mill, hoping to bring them to justice. A theme in Wilson's plays is that he chooses one or two characters who are rooted in the past rather than the future.
It is difficult for them to come to terms with these new rights because they still see the world in terms of slavery versus freedom. Yet, by imparting their wisdom, they hope that the younger generations can enjoy freedoms that they only dreamed of during their days in bondage. Gem of the Ocean is the fourth of Wilson's plays that I have read. If read chronologically it is an empowering read to commence the century cycle.
The reader sees how northern blacks lived prior to the beginnings of the Great Migration, as Wilson plants the seeds for the wave of blacks who eventually find their way north. A powerful play, I hope to read the Century Cycle in its entirety. August Wilson was a gem of a playwright, and Gem of the Ocean measures up to his other award winning works.
Bill Kerwin. Author 1 book It is a good place to start, for—other than mere chronology—it ably articulates the central themes of the cycle: how freedom is always partial, something continually sought, how both our dreams and our cynicism may hold us back—or spur us on—in our quest for freedom, depending on our knowledge of, and relationship with, the past.
Central to Gem of the Ocean --and the cycle—is the ancient Aunt Esther, a spiritual leader and healer of the black community who is rumored to be years old. Those who only know Wilson through his great play Fences may be disappointed, for Gem lacks the vivid characters and intense personal drama of that earlier play. Its characters are often little more than mouths, stereotypes to speak the superb dialogue, and the plot lacks tension and urgency.
Still, the climax—the scene of the boat journey itself—is very fine, a marvel of expressionistic theater which brings the play to a satisfying conclusion. I will end with the voice of Aunt Esther, speaking of the nature of boats and also hypnotizing Citizen with words in order to prepare him for his journey : You ever seen a boat, Mr.
A boat is made out of a lot of things. Wood and rope. The sails look like bedsheets blowing in the wind. They make a snap when the winds catch them. This is both a mythologically resonant performance—audaciously placed in the middle of an ostensibly realistic Ibsenite or Millerite historical drama—and a defense of the art of the drama itself as a purifying and cleansing rite. But even the more realistic aspects of Gem of the Ocean are deceptive, for apart from the mythopoeia, there is also a beautifully economical political allegory.
Solly Two Kings represents the Biblical heroism, the royal individualism, of the generation that had to fight its way clear of slavery. Caesar, as his name implies, stands for worldly as against spiritual power—and also stands for the figure of the black conservative, from Booker T.
Washington to Clarence Thomas, the servant of the dominant culture who polices his people. He wields the law as a weapon against spiritual freedom, which is the essence of his conflict with Solly:. Thus the play leaves us on the threshold of the twentieth century.
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