Performing the Hebrew Iamb: an adaptation of Griboyedov
Maya Arad
In the talk I discuss the process of writing and performing my Hebrew verse
play, Tzadik Ne'ezav (A Righteous Man Foresaken), a Hebrew adaptation of
Griboyedov's Russian classic, Gore ot Uma (Woe from Wit). The Russian play,
in turn, is a very free adaptation of Molière's Misanthrope. Altogether,
there are four texts and three transformations: from the French to the
Russian, from the Russian to the Hebrew and from Hebrew script to Hebrew
performance. I touch on all texts and transformations, concentrating on the
Russian-Hebrew comparison. My observations are arranged in ascending
phonological order: (1) Stress, (2) Pause and Caesura, (3) Line length, (4)
Rhyming pattern. Throughout, I address a single problem, as follows.
Consider two poles of acting style, of which let us call "declamatory" the
style of acting where the dominant prosodic structure is determined by the
metrical pattern, and "realistic" the style of acting where the dominant
prosodic structure is determined by grammatical and pragmatic constituents.
The problem then becomes: how can a verse play be played in a realistic
style while still maintaining its poetic nature? I show how this was
achieved by Griboyedov and, in another way (I hope) by my own play. The
differences between Griboyedov's play and mine have to do, I argue, with
the different expectations of the audience and, in general, the performance
properties of different prosodic structures are to some extent culturally
sensitive.
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