Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (4)

The final performances of this great play in Silver Spring, Maryland are today:

Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM

An Open Forum discussion will follow the matinee.

Read this brief interview:

Better Know an Actor: Mitchell Hébert - Forum Theatre

Note that the actor who plays both the main character and Zamenhof says that he is most moved when he recites Zamenhof's lines saying that Esperanto was worth creating even though the Nazis killed his whole family. I think I'm going to be verklempt all over again.

Litertipo Zamenhof

Jen ekspliko anglalingva de litertiparo "Zamenhof" ĉe MyFonts:

Zamenhof is a family of five fonts that can be used singly or in combination to create a variety of bold, yet elegant, display styles. Inspired by Russian hand-lettering that appears to have been based on Jakob Erbar’s Phosphor, Zamenhof is essentially a Latin interpretation (with Cyrillic and Greek) of a Cyrillic interpretation of a Latin type design, with many changes along the way. (For example, all the Latin-only letters are quite different between the two designs: D, F, G, J, K, N, Q, R, S, U, V, W, Y, Z.) More…

The Inline and Inverse styles of Zamenhof are the basic fonts and can be used effectively on their own. The Plain and Outline fonts — which I recommend using only in combination with the main designs — were created specifically to be combined with Inline and Inverse, as underlay and overlay layers, respectively. (You will need an application that supports layers, such as Adobe InDesign or Photoshop.)

Zamenhof supports most European languages as well as modern Greek, and of course, Russian and other languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet. Needless to say, as Zamenhof is named after the father of Esperanto, it also supports Esperanto (as do all fonts from CastleType).

Black Steampunk / Negra Vaporpunko

I have no investment in steampunk as a lifestyle/subculture or as a literary/artistic genre, but I do think it is a significant phenomenon and symptomatic of our time. It is the futurism of the past, and that it should surface as a recognizable phenomenon and be named in the present is probably not accidental. (Of course there were manifestations of steampunk long before it became a category, but I’m referring to its emergence as a conscious movement.) Why now the futurism of the past?

The fantasy future of unlimited possibilities coexists, even as it did a century ago, with the fantasy of a terminal disaster much closer to realization. The contours of futurism have already been mapped out. Not only do we live in an alleged postmodern age, but we live in a combinatorial age, and a retrospective age. Our society has already reached the peak of real abstraction. We look backwards toward origins, reevaluating the past, the present, and the path taken in between.

Steampunk matters, I think, because the tangible origins of science fiction, of futurism, and of what has been constructed throughout the twentieth century, is really the nineteenth century. Science and technology as well as the projective imagination reached a critical point in that century, and so, rather than with foraging, pastoral, agricultural, feudal, mercantile, or emergent industrial society, the future originates in the nineteenth century.

Steampunk, with its odd mixture of futurism and the quaint and outdated Victorian aesthetic, combines and naturally merges with the parallel genre of alternate history, which itself could be considered the fantasy counterpart of the historical novel, which has also taken on a new flavor in recent decades. And this retrospective consciousness is also a reflexive consciousness. We are already aware of fundamentally changed assumptions in contrast to those of the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, so when we look back more than a century, we are not just trying to recreate a bygone era but to be aware of its presuppositions, and from there postulate alternate histories.

(This retrospective consciousness enters into historical Jewish fiction as well, which is where Esperanto now shows up as one of those utopian possibilities of a long-lost era. But Esperanto and Volapük show up outside of Jewish preoccupations as well.)

Of course, any subculture can end up as yet another thoughtless, escapist refuge. There is no novelty left in subcultures, though of course creativity can be found anywhere. Still, this awareness of the ability to manipulate cultural codes has many twists. And so there is not only steampunk, but there is black steampunk, as there is already Afrofuturism, another conceptual category constructed many decades after its manifestations appeared in practice.

Which brings me to black steampunk. Maybe, in the spirit of retro, it should be called Negro steampunk. In any case, here are some manifestations of said orientation.

Beyond Victoriana

State of Black Sci-Fi 2012: Why I love Steampunk!
Balogun, 23 Jan 2012

The State of Black SF 2012: Why I love Steampunk 
Valjeanne’s Blog, January 24, 2012

Guest Post: Steampunk/Alt History Week
Living in Color by Tanita Davis
SFWA Blog, December 23, 2010

The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective
By jha
Racialicious (blog), June 24, 2009

Do Goggles Block the Sun? Steampunk in Africa
Clay and Susan Griffith
Tor.com, Oct. 28, 2010

Steampunk Webcomic Set in Africa
By Manny, Steampunk Costume, June 11, 2010

Africa: "Steampunk Values." Bushpunk Slums
Bombasticelement.org, November 22, 2010

African Empires
By G. D. Falksen
Steampunk Fashion, June 30, 2009

Steampunk Author Balogun Oyabode Abeegunde Writes Harriet Tubman as an Extraordinary Gentlewoman!
Alicia McCalla, December 5, 2011

Interview with the African American Steampunk Author of "Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman"
Yahoo group discussion, Dec. 6, 2011

Steampunk: What it is, why I came to like it, and why I think it’ll stick around
The Clockwork Century, August 8, 2009

Books: Yet Another Ramble About Steampunk Romance
The Fancy Reader, Dec. 12, 2011

African steampunk merchandise
Etsy

Esperantistoj, iam mi tradukos miajn cerbumaĵojn pri vaporpunko al Esperanto. La temo rilatas al Esperanto pro la apero de Esperanto en historiaj kaj ukroniaj fikciaĵoj, kaj pro la fakto ke Esperanto estas samtempa kun la vaporpunka erao. Legu miajn antaŭan afiŝojn pri vaporpunko kaj ukronio.

Steampunk / Vaporpunko & Esperanto

Mi jam menciis . . .

League of Steampunk Esperantists (GVE), ero de The Steampunk Empire (La Vaporpunka Imperio).

Jen aliaj ligoj:

Steampunk in Esperanto (Ĉe la Koro de la Tero) 
by Marquis de Montcalm on March 3, 2011

The value of Esperanto to the Steampunk Crossroads?
by Leane Roffey Line on February 6, 2011

Multiculturalism for Steampunk: February is the Great Language Learning Challenge! *fanfare*  
January 24, 2011

Successes, News and Other High-Fives for SlugTribers 
The Slug Tribe, Summer-Winter 2011-12

"N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis!" I found Esperanto in Skyrim!
Tia Marie, February 08, 2012

Cândido Ruiz's Page
 
1ºEvento Steam
Video

R. Cândido Ruiz's Gallery
Ipernity

Teknoviktoriano 
Diskuto, novembro 2011

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (3)

Everyone I know who saw this play loved it. Now for some more links.

First, the Forum Theatee's own web page for the play:

The Language Archive

There is also a blog for your comments (see mine):

OpenForum Blog: Announcing a Season, part 2 of 4

The Forum Theater also has a Facebook page. The Theatre references my review on this blog and says (21 Feb.):

A nice blog response to THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE from an Esperanto perspective! Dankon!

To which actor Mitchell Hébert, who plays the Language Archivist George and Dr. Zamenhof, adds: "Dankon!!"

Now for reviews in the press and the blogosphere. The first one I found was:

The Language Archive, By Tim Treanor (DC Theatre Scene, February 20, 2012)

This is an eminently fair and positive review. I don't agree with the few negative criticisms, but they are not major.

Here is a very attentive and favorable review:

The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, By Amanda Gunther, Maryland Theatre Guide, February 20, 2012

The Washington City Paper review plays up the comic aspects of the play:

The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, Reviewed: Or: The case of the tongue-tied linguist By Rebecca J. Ritzel • Washington City Paper • February 24, 2012

Ritzel indeed lauds the comedy. As for her less favorable remarks, the show did not drag for me at any point. She also criticizes Mary's encounter with the ostensibly suicidal baker. Of course there is exaggeration and not every encounter depicted would be realistic outside of the theater. The reviewer does not adequately attend to the serious side of the play. While a bare account of the theme might strike the unwary reader as trite, the execution of the play's premise is a work of superior craftsmanship, and is in the end emotionally powerful. Already one reader's comment has appeared. I may add mine as well.

Mia esperantista vivo resumita

Fojfoje mi aldonas esperantistan aŭtobiografieton al ia retejo. Jen la plej freŝa, verkita en aŭtuno 2011 por loka klubo:

Renkontu Lokajn Esperantistojn « La Esperanto-Societo de Vaŝingtono ЄЭ

Jam estas novaj eroj aldonendaj. Atentu venontajn blogerojn por novaĵoj.

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (2)

The Language Archive
Presented by Forum Theatre
By Julia Cho
Directed by Jessica Burgess
February 16 - March 10, 2012
Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland

In my previous blog post of last June on this play, I embedded videos of scenes from the play as well as of playwright Julia Cho. There is, of course, a vast difference between watching a YouTube video and experiencing a play live in a theater. Still, I will claim that the Round House production is second to none. The intensity of the acting beats what I see in these videos. Both the hilarity and pathos of this production are most compelling, hence I recommend it to all.

---

“Language is an act of faith.” – L. L. Zamenhof (as an apparition)

The Language Archive, opening with a marital conflict and broadening with other characters and relationships, gets more and more hilarious, but in the end it is incredibly moving. The bickering between the language archivist and his wife rings all too familiar. The nature of communication is shown to be a much broader phenomenon than the language in which it is imperfectly embodied and is shown to be itself imperfect in its paralinguistic dimension. Esperanto plays a major role in the play—both comical and serious—and Zamenhof himself is a character. The notion of the language archive—an institution dedicated to the recording and preservation of dying languages—is not a mere playwright's gimmick: there is poignancy in the vanishing worlds of the last speakers of these languages, and in the loss of personal relationships in worlds still living, but also something profound is conveyed about the chronic failure of the quest for mutual understanding. The play does have a resolution but neither a happy nor an unhappy ending. We constantly fall short in our attempt to communicate ourselves, and yet we persist. Language is an act of faith.

---

Towards the end of the play, when Zamenhof makes the statement I quoted, I started to choke up, as I did at play's end, which involved both the final "resolutions" of the characters as well as the various dead languages being spoken over the loudspeaker. While attempting to minimize the spoilers, I guess I have to explain my reaction to the Zamenhof character. The treatment of Zamenhof as a wise old man reminds me of the appearances of Einstein in popular culture, in movies or TV shows. But what's relevant in this particular scene is that the lab assistant asked Zamenhof if he would have acted differently had he known that all his children would be targeted and murdered by the Nazis because of Esperanto. Zamenhof replied, no. And then he says: "Language is an act of faith." For me this encapsulated the theme of the whole play. But the broad theme was love and communication. Both often fail, yet even with the imperfection of the process and the outcome, there is nonetheless a vehicle, even if an imperfect one, which provides a means at least to make something happen—a bold foray into the unknown and uncontrollable course of events.

When I relayed this scene yesterday to my companion over coffee, once again I was verklempt. My companion thought this utterance by the phantom Zamenhof a profound one. Why does it affect me so? It reminds me of the program note of another philosophical favorite, Duke Ellington:

Communication itself is what baffles the multitude. It is both so difficult and so simple. Of all men's fears, I think that men are most afraid of being what they are — in direct communication with the world at large. They fear reprisals, the most personal of which is that they "won't be understood."

. . . Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty — trying to communicate themselves, understood or not — miracles have happened.

I have, by the way, translated this into Esperanto:

Duke Ellington Komunikas ‘Preter Kategorio’

Returning from public to private communication, I find it rather remarkable that the notion of compiling a recording of "I love you" in all the dying and extinct languages of the world works so well as a theatrical device. You might think it the corniest gimmick ever. Not so. No, sir. Nothing could be more effective than the voices of all those ghosts of lost worlds, expressing the fundamental human motivation behind everything we care about. The peculiar, divergent metaphorical expressions in all those languages that we unify under the rubric of this one meaning reflect both the imperfection of the linguistic vehicle and the concept it aims to express beyond its own linguistic means; that is, we feel the striving to communicate those lost and invisible worlds (of two people or of an entire culture) even while not comprehending the languages through which they are spoken. Hence our own perception is raised beyond our own unreflective habits. Hence theater itself pushes out beyond the limits of culture into a new perception of our reality.

And now to reconnect the private and the public, and in this note, Ellington with Zamenhof. Esperanto never was the all-encompassing vehicle for Zamenhof's aims, nor could the development of the Esperanto movement be contained within or adequately expressive of those aims. Yet, groping half-blind into the uncertain future, with all the imperfections of human relations and communication, Zamenhof cast his lot with his linguistic creation, a language unique in its genesis, character and physiognomy, but still only a language, like all others, yet a language made with love. One feels it in Zamenhof's own passion. Whatever other illusions one wishes to dispel with respect to the language and its creator, this vital force continues to inspire. Lives have been lived and lost with this language. And the fact of striving is as important as the outcome. Expression is happiness.