Translation Observation

Victoria Haralabidou's first play was written in just two months as part of a writing workshop for culturally diverse playwrights at Parramatta's Riverside Theatre. Participants were tasked to write two scenes during the workshop; Haralabidou couldn't stop. “I ended up writing the whole play. I had to get it out, or I was going to start shooting people,” she says, and then, to clarify, adds, “My humour, I think, is still Russian.”

This kind of cultural clash is one of many that have shaped Haralabidou's life. Born in Russia to Russian and Greek parents, as a teenager she moved to Greece, where she learned the native language, before returning to Russia, studying translation in France, and eventually moving to Sydney in 2005. “My understanding of cultures and clashing cultures is through song,” Haralabidou explains. As testament to that is the title of her debut play, One Scientific Mystery Or Why Did The Aborigines Eat Captain Cook?, not the potentially offensive remark some people have mistaken it to be, but instead a song by one of Russia's most lauded musicians, Vladimir Vysotsky.

“One of the characters in the play gets offended by the song, and my character, Doosia, explains to him: he was a legend, he died in the 1980s, he was an actor, singer, performer. He had a very particular voice,” Haralabidou continues, crystalising her observation that it is through song that she examines culture, “he played guitar, and when he died in the 1980s his funeral was bigger than the Moscow Olympics opening ceremony, I would say, he was huge! Everybody from the top academics to the poorest alcoholics in Russia knows him.

“The story is two Australian guys in Russia now and they meet this Russian girl. I'm not very good with metaphors, I'm good with writing everyday situations, so if you want, the metaphor is that they are a bit like Captain Cook, in a completely foreign, strange land where people sing songs about them which sound really wrong,” Haralabidou explains. Vysotsky isn't the only musician getting some time on stage; Haralabidou says Donna Summer also rates a mention, and recalls yet another clash of cultures, a translation of human desires, that has influenced the ideas being bounced around in the production, to be directed by Iain Sinclar this month at TAP Gallery.

“There's a reference to Donna Summer, the song Love To Love You Baby,” says Haralabidou. “When I first heard it I was about six, via a pirate tape that my dad had and without understanding any English I could feel there was something there, so I asked my dad, 'What's wrong with the lady?' and he was so embarrassed because the notion of sex or anything to do with sex in Soviet Union at that time was absolutely taboo!”

Ultimately, the play provides a space for Haralabidou to examine the kind of translation that really intrigues her, one that is more humanistic than linguistic. “I moved to Australia in 2005 and I married an Aussie guy and that was a circus itself, because what fascinates me most is trying to translate human nature, human experiences, the past, your fears, your worries, your excitement, all into another language and connect through that with the other person.”

WHAT: One Scientific Mystery Or Why Did The Aborigines Eat Captain Cook?
WHERE & WHEN: Monday 8 April to Sunday 14 April, TAP Gallery