Tom Stoppard in Minsk
Tom Stoppard was in Minsk this week! It’s interesting how the news got spread. First, one livejournal user wrote in his journal: “Guys, I’m not bullshitting. I just saw Tom Stoppard in Bar London [a famous little cozy bar on the central Minsk street]”, then another blogger claimed he saw Stoppard on Minsk streets. Finally, one more blogger, who seems to be a serious theater fan, wrote in his blog that it was actually him who invited Stoppard for a private visit to Belarus! And on Friday, finally one of the newspapers “Nasha Niva” ran a story about Tom Stoppard’s visit to Minsk, so it wasn’t after all an insider livejournal joke (as I had suspected originally).
Recently, there was a theater contest of “Free Theater” in Minsk where young playwrights could submit their work. Tom Stoppard asked which language did the people write in? He was truly surprised when they told him that out of 231 submissions, only 4 were in Belarusian. Then he also said that (sorry, I’m translating back from Belarusian, so it’ll be a bit like Babelfish-type translation):
“I think when a playwirght writes in two languages it’s OK. For example, Samuel Becket wrote in English and in French, and translated his own works. It’s no problem. But believe me, when I write in English, and someone translates my play into German, French or any other language, I feel immediately that there’s something amiss. It seems to me that translation is an impossible task. I am interested in linguistic situation, and I don’t understand what language you speak here. In 1990 Belarusian language became the official language, and now everything has been reversed. This is a mystery to me. But this is simply fantastic that I could come here. I hope I’ll visit Belarus again.”
I’m not a big fan of drama and theater (I loathed it ever since middle school obligatory visits to the theater to see some Soviet-type cheap production), so I tried to avoid plays ever since I finished high school. And I avoided it quite successfully, I should say, until 2000. When my future wife gave me (almost by force) a copy of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and I read it on the way from Sophia to Minsk via Vienna, on the plane and while waiting in Vienna airport. At that point I realized that even I (a person totally deaf to the genre) can be touched and entertained by this kind of writing. I thought it was witty, funny and brilliant.
