Tamiah Woodfork | Contributing Photographer

I arrived with the noble journalistic ambition of not getting in the way. My plan was to write a short chronicle about the penultimate rehearsal of “Hélène’s Dreams,” a play written, translated, and directed by playwright and journalist Amira-Géhanne Khalfallah, a current Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at WashU. “Hélène’s Dreams” tells the story of Hélène, who, after a stroke, begins speaking another language. Her husband, desperate to communicate with her again, hires a translator. 

I was there 20 minutes early, and I chatted with one of the actors, Michael A. Harding, associate professor of theater at Lindenwood University, about the project. 

“‘Hélène’s Dreams’ is about translation,” Harding said, “about the encounter and the missed encounter between languages.”

We spoke as the rest of the cast filtered into Hurst Lounge. Khalfallah introduced me to the cast. 

“This is Matías. We’d met at the doctoral student picnic a couple of weeks ago,” she said, as if that explained why I was there. 

“He’s studying theater,” she added, and an “aaah” of understanding rumbled through the room. 

“Matías is interested in the making of theater productions and told me he’d like to see our work.” 

“Maybe I’ll write a little something,” I said, trying to legitimize my presence. I settled into a corner, laptop on my lap, unaware that my discreet role as observer was about to take an unexpected turn. 

That afternoon, one of the actresses in the chorus — the one who provided the Arabic voice — was absent. After a brief, indeed very brief, reflection (I can’t stress enough how brief it was), the director’s eyes landed on me. 

“Could you replace her for the rehearsal?” Khalfallah asked.

“My Arabic is terrible, mostly because I don’t speak it,” I replied. 

“But you can speak Spanish,” she said. 

The fact is, I’m Chilean, so I kinda speak Spanish — despite what the rest of the Spanish speakers may think. Besides, I’ve always had an actor’s calling, and I couldn’t help but feel that my talent had finally been discovered. The goddess of the stage is capricious. As always, curiosity triumphed over shyness. 

Brief digression on Chilean Spanish. There’s an old meme among Spanish speakers that no one can understand Chileans when we talk. And there’s some truth to that. We speak fast, chop off words, skip sounds, and use hundreds of slang terms — all wrapped in an accent that, they say, sounds like we’re singing. Although I cherish my Spanish, maybe that’s why “Hélène’s Dreams” struck such a chord with me. My Peruvian friends, with their crystal-clear Spanish cadence; my dear Colombians, owners of the sweetest accent in the language, and Argentinians, Mexicans, Spaniards, and Uruguayans have more than once looked at me like someone trying to read the last line of an eyechart, as if they were hearing me blurrily, as if I was speaking another language. #IAmHélène #WeAreAllHélène. End of the brief digression on Chilean Spanish. 

In this play, everything is a translation. Not only is the script itself translated from French to English, but, as in any theatrical production, the printed word is translated into the vibration of voice and the disposition of the actor’s body. And there I was, experiencing the process firsthand. 

The chorus of the play is a modern Tower of Babel — a sonic mosaic composed of speakers of Korean, Italian, French, German, and Arabic — and, on that day, Spanish. At the time, I didn’t realize it, but my sporadic apparition not only solved the problem of the missing actress, it had also embodied the very thesis of the play: from time to time, we find ourselves before a language we cannot decipher. The chorus actors had to contend not only with my onstage “talent,” but also with the total bewilderment provoked by my Spanish — unexpected, yet suddenly present among them. 

My participation was a direct plunge into the play’s layering of sounds and ideas. My Spanish voice merged with the others in a disorienting yet strangely beautiful cacophony — meant not to be understood, but to become part of a richer sonic texture. Around me, the rehearsal buzzed with energy: constant corrections, interpretative adjustments, negotiations of tone and nuance. It was communication and miscommunication unfolding in real time. 

The director’s artistic vision, too, was a language that needed to be translated into the physical grammar of the stage. The ensemble’s discussions were attempts to find the right bodily “synonyms” for abstract ideas. After my brief appearance, I returned to the corner — this time near the door, just in case — as an observer, but with eyes and ears recalibrated. 

Languages are living entities, with bodies, textures, and temperatures of their own. The beauty of a multilingual play like “Hélène’s Dreams” lies as much in what we understand as in what eludes us, in the mystery of a sonority that reaches our senses, though not always our comprehension. Instead of asking what it means, we could ask what voltereta feels like, or frutti di mare, or chuchoter.

As I watched the rest of the rehearsal, I couldn’t stop thinking about the original French text. How can one preserve its musicality? What subtleties are lost in translation and what new ones emerge? What happens to the delicate nuances of words that share meaning but differ so greatly in sound? These are the very questions the play seems to pose repeatedly. 

My brief debut on stage offered me a glimpse into the complex themes of this play: translation as a creative act, communication as an imperfect but worthwhile effort, and art as the place where chaos finds order. 

On Friday, Aug. 17, I attended the stage reading of “Hélène’s Dreams.” I barely made it in time, and the Women’s Building Formal Lounge was packed. I crawled between the rows of seats, muttering “excuse me” and “thank you” intermittently — what I like to call “the theater walk of shame.” From my seat, I couldn’t see a thing, but this play isn’t about seeing, it’s about listening. And it sounded fantastic. I thought that that was the point: to listen — to truly listen — might be the most intimate act of translation. 

This article was originally written in Spanish and later translated into English.