A Cancún resort, a housekeeper in grief, a tourist with a secret: How a new play speaks its truths

The play “Clear/Espejos” at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa dives into the cultural divide between resort visitor and resort worker partly by way of a tool which may startle some viewers members at first: Dialogue is spoken in not one language however two.

Housekeeping supervisor Adriana speaks all her traces in Spanish. Canadian vacationer Sarah speaks hers traces in English. Translations for each are built-in into the stage design as the 2 characters’ lives intertwine in Cancún, Mexico: Adriana, performed by Lorena Martinez, has simply came upon that her father has died. Sarah, performed by Nell Geisslinger, has arrived for her sister’s wedding ceremony however finds herself reminded of a haunting childhood incident.

Playwright Christine Quintana was impressed to put in writing “Clear/Espejos” after visiting members of the family who work within the resort business in Cancún and seeing firsthand what life is like for employees. The divide was jarring.

“I felt plenty of friction and considered the entire thought of the resort being a fantasy of Mexico supplied by these massive, largely American-owned resort corporations,” Quintana stated. “I jumped to fascinated about the sensation of disembodiment and disassociation, emotions just like dissociation from trauma. This setting appeared like the right backdrop to discover some concepts I’d been fascinated about when it comes to trauma and the way the issues that occur to us form our lives for a lot of, a few years after.”

Quintana accomplished a draft inside a month of returning to her dwelling in Canada. She determined that if Adriana have been to be a Mexican girl, she wanted to talk her traces in Spanish. As a result of Quintana isn’t a fluent Spanish speaker, she reached out to Paula Zelaya Cervantes, a playwright and director from Mexico Metropolis whom she had met whereas they have been each finding out on the College of British Columbia. Quintana described Cervantes’ contributions as not simply translation but additionally adaptation.

“At one level, I wrote that any individual knocks on the door,” Quintana stated, including that Cervantes urged: “Nicely, really, in any such home in Mexico, on this space, they might ring the doorbell of a gate and somebody would come get you.” Quintana stated Cervantes helped fill in gaps that “somebody from Vancouver wouldn’t know.”

Quintana and Cervantes additionally collaborated on the character of Adriana, ensuring that her speech was reflective of a lady from Mexico particularly. “We actually didn’t wish to make it a generic multinational Spanish translation,” Quintana stated. “We needed a personality that basically feels like the world the place she’s from.”

Cervantes, who largely interprets the works of well-known playwrights similar to Tennessee Williams and Margaret Edson, cherished the collaboration.

“I didn’t must guess what the playwright would have needed, as a result of the playwright may inform me herself. It was fixed communication,” Cervantes stated. “Even once we needed to alter the which means of a line as a result of it merely wouldn’t translate into Spanish naturally, I’d describe the road’s ‘feeling’ to Christine and she or he would say, ‘Sure, that’s precisely it,’ after which I used to be in a position to create new traces that felt pure in Spanish and that also carried an analogous ambiance and texture because the English model.”

As soon as South Coast Repertory determined to stage a bilingual play (“Clear/Espejos” is a part of the corporate’s Pacific Playwrights Competition), crucial element that wanted to be sorted out was the query of subtitles. Director Lisa Portes stated she labored intently with scenic designer Brian Sidney Bembridge and manufacturing designer Yee Eun Nam to discover a technique to incorporate dialogue translations into the design.

“We determined we have been going to create 4 panels that may be on tracks sliding backwards and forwards,” Portes stated. They created a band about 9 ft up the place titles are projected. “We actually needed to create dynamic subtitling and, once more, make it a part of the design, versus one thing that’s separate and would take the viewers’s eyes away from the actors.”

With the titles locked in, “Clear/Espejos” turned a theater expertise equally accessible to Spanish and English audio system alike. Quintana couldn’t be happier to listen to her play spoken in two languages.

“It’s a thrill to listen to Spanish onstage,” Quintana stated. “I actually hope, as somebody who largely speaks English, that I get to see extra bilingual, multilingual performs. I take into consideration my life in Vancouver and the way listening to Mandarin or Farsi on the road is a part of my life. I’d be so thrilled to see these languages onstage and get an opportunity to spend time with characters really talking in their very own language.”