A Conversation with
the Translator

Dramaturg Robyn Quick speaks with John J. Hanlon about the translation of Vodka, Fucking and Television.

John J. Hanlon is an educator, actor, and translator.  A graduate of the Yale School of Drama program in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Mr. Hanlon studied Russian Language and Literature at Swarthmore College and holds additional master’s degrees in Liberal Studies and English & American Literature. Currently, he directs the theater program and teaches courses in literature and history at an independent school in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He has translated three plays by Maksym Kurochkin - Fighter Class Medea, Vodka, Fucking, and Television, and Mooncrazed.

RQ: What inspired you to study the Russian language and to work as a translator?

JH: When I arrived at Swarthmore College, I was eager to begin studying a new foreign language, a language I could use. (My father insisted that I take Latin in high school.) This was 1986: the years of Gorbachev and glasnost. Russia was opening up to the West for the first time in decades, and something about Soviet culture just felt very intriguing to me. At Swarthmore, the language program is intensive, so after a year and a half, we were being introduced to Russian literature by our émigré professors, who had led fascinating lives. Once I encountered that literature’s deep philosophical themes and the sensitivity of Russian authors to the depths and complexities of the human soul, there was no turning back. And after I spent a fabulous semester abroad in Moscow, I switched my major to Russian language and literature.

However, fifteen years passed before I learned the art of play translation. At Yale, all students in the dramaturgy program are required to translate a play. Of course, we were also studying theater history and criticism, learning how to be literary managers and dramaturgs – at the time, I had no idea that translation would fascinate me like no other part of the dramaturg’s portfolio. These days, it’s the pleasure I get from combining my lifelong passion for the theater and my love of all things Russian that propels me from one project to the next.

RQ: What do you see as some of the particular considerations one must make when translating a work for the stage?

JH: While I’ve never done “technical” translation work – of, say, a legal document or a user manual – I imagine that it feels a lot different than the work I do. Essentially, I create an original play in English that is a “shadow version” of the Russian play. What that means in terms of my process is that I spend a lot of time with the text - visualizing the scenes, hearing the characters speak, feeling the dramatic conflicts - before I write a single word in English. The language of the new play has to be able to stand on its own in an American theater. Oftentimes, that means forging dialogue that is analogous to what the characters are saying in Russian. It creates the same emotional dynamic in the scene as the Russian words do in that play. And, for me, that’s the most crucial thing – getting the emotional dynamics right.

RQ: You are now working on the translation of your fourth play by Maksym Kurochkin. What attracted to his work?

JH: I was introduced to Maks by John Freedman, the theater critic for the Moscow Times. John is, undeniably, the central figure for bringing contemporary Russian playwrights to the attention of the English-speaking world. We had been corresponding for a couple of years, so he had a sense of what kind of theater I’m committed to. And it occurred to him that Fighter Class “Medea” was something I’d like. He was right. The Lark Play Development Center in New York brought me and Maks together for a workshop production of the play. Maks, who does have a little English, would sit in the back of the room and watch these great actors doing an American version of his play, and he told me he could feel that I had captured the essential qualities of his work. Plus, we just hit it off personally. The next summer, I spent a couple of weeks with Maks on his home turf in Kiev, and we’re great friends now.

John Freedman has pointed out that with every new play, Maks seems to totally reinvent his dramaturgy. He conceives a fully realized yet imaginary world; that world has its own contours, its own rules, attitudes, emotional timbre. Whenever I get my hands on a new Kurochkin play, I’m buzzing with anticipation: What hath God wrought this time?! Still, there is something at the core of all of Maksym’s plays that makes them inherently worthwhile, and that is the human heart. Typically, whether as a reader or a spectator, you’re about three quarters of the way through this hilarious, thought-provoking, wild theatrical romp when you suddenly recognize that the play is not about female fighter pilots of some apocalyptic future, or Cyrano deBergerac, or a struggling Russian writer, or the captain who rescued people from the Titanic disaster – it’s about YOU. And Maksym’s ability to create ingenious works for the theater that hit you in the guts and take your breath away is what keeps me coming back to him. I don’t work for anyone else.

RQ: How would you characterize his use of language and what particular challenges or opportunities does that present for you as a translator?

JH: It’s funny: for most of the dialogue sections of his plays, it feels to me like ordinary Russian speech, like I’m hearing my Russian friends or people on the streets of Moscow talking. I prop his script up on my desk and follow the Russian dialogue with my eyes, and the English version just flows right into my keyboard. But his stage directions make me work more. (Maksym’s plays always teach me new words. This one I’m working on now, for example, takes place entirely on a pirate ship, so I’m learning a lot of naval terms, the parts of a sea vessel and what not.) It’s the visuals and action of his plays that usually contain the most surprises and revelations. (‘Vodka’ is an exception in that regard – the play doesn’t have a single stage direction.) When, after working with my dictionary for a little while, I finally understand what he’s calling for on the stage, I can feel my eyes popping wide open! And I want directors and literary managers who are reading the play to feel that sensation – the shock and the smile – in an immediate way, so I labor on those sections to make them flow naturally in English.

RQ: The second word in the title of this play may intrigue or even surprise some audience members. How does that word resonate in the original Russian? Did you consider other English words in translation or did it see to you that there was only one clear choice?

That’s a great question. Let me say first that there was only one clear choice – it’s an exact translation, and there could really be no other word if you wanted to remain true to the spirit of the original. The term is extremely profane in Russian – or, at least it was for most of the twentieth century. Now, just as it’s become more common to hear “F-bombs” in our culture, Russian speech in the wake of the collapse of the USSR has become infested with profanity. The whole play reflects this new linguistic reality. While I was working on it, I had to buy two Russian-English dictionaries dedicated exclusively to profanity! (Russian profanity – or maht – is very creative; it was challenging to find English equivalents that would match the expressivity of Maksym’s original dialogue.)

In my opinion, the real genius of this play is the visionary way in which it embodies that term (along with vodka and television), brings it to life, not only as a theatrical force but also as a force in our own lives, something that we can recognize (perhaps for the first time), reflect on, and, like the play’s hero, make choices about.

The cast of Vodka, Fucking and Television (left) joins translator John Hanlon and Robyn Quick in a post-show discussion. Towson University. October 2009. Photo: Lacy Reilly.