Musings of an Old New Bird #01
From Page to Stage and Back to the Page
by Lim Woan Wen
Upon ending a brief stint as a reporter shortly after graduation, I had unambiguously shelved the mighty pen, nosedived into theatre, spent the best part of the next two decades honing my skills as a stage lighting designer, and never looked back. And then came mid-life, followed closely by the pandemic. Live performances brought to a halt for the first time in my career (and life, for that matter) meant I suddenly had ample time (and necessity) to properly address a timely crisis: what else am I capable of other than designing lights for stage productions? For the first time in twenty years, I found myself looking back and carefully brushing dust off that neglected pen.
About a year later, I decided to apply for SALT, the Singapore Apprenticeship in Literary Translation programme co-organised by the Singapore Book Council and Tender Leaves Translation, and mentored by Shelly Bryant. By this point I had managed to accumulate a small portfolio of writing and translation works, though none of them had anything to with literature and my new CV looked absolutely puny next to my design resume. With so little relevant experience, I was certain I would not be selected.
When Shelly explained in our first meeting that it was precisely my background which got her interested in my application, given that so much of theatre is about translating from the page to the stage, the validation promptly lit up blind spots previously obscured by my insecurities. But of course. What have I been thinking? Lighting design is indeed an art of translation too, albeit using a very different medium.
To begin with, there is an old adage which posits that lighting design must never call attention to itself (I would argue it depends on context, but that is for another discussion). In that respect, it is not unlike literary translation: the art is often invisible when done well, and usually noticed only when it is extraordinarily brilliant (not always understood as a good thing) or a total wreck.
Now we are getting somewhere…
Back in the meeting, Shelly and I went on to speak about literary translation and she shared her belief about faithfulness being more important than accuracy. That immediately struck a chord.
Art imitates life, and stage lighting is no exception. What an audience perceives as “right” is grounded in reality and largely informed by our largest source of natural light, the sun. A lighting designer tasked to create a realistic-looking sunrise or sunset on stage would be expected to craft an impression that “matches” the real event in a befitting and believable manner.
What is considered a “correct” match, however, depends on who you ask. I once congratulated a fellow lighting designer for what I felt was a very beautifully rendered sunset, only to learn the designer’s professor had thought it was “too pink." In one of my own versions of a sunset, I had disregarded its natural progression in tonal shifts and rearranged my palette to suit the aesthetics desired, only to have another fellow designer astutely point out that I had gotten “the colour order wrong." Despite its “wrongness," this same sunset did impress at least one audience who was overheard exclaiming (after show, of course): they nailed the sunset!
As much as it is a skill I may never perfect, I have long stopped caring too much about imitating natural light to a T in my practice. Make no mistake, the sun is my greatest muse. But the thing is, I am convinced it is impossible to match its technical excellency. As such, I have become much more interested in seeking to capture the awe — a tangible and visceral feeling that hits you in the gut and moves you in depths you did not know you have — that natural light is capable of inspiring.
I certainly see a similar vein in the acknowledgement that a word-for-word match need not be of utmost concern in literary translation. Not that I imagine technical accuracy should be taken lightly, but I appreciate the recognition that the impact and effect behind words are even more worthy of pursuit, and that capturing the right voice is more significant, and arguably more complex a feat, than harping on the exactness of what has been uttered.
And what a relief it is to find these parallels. At the very least, it is now clearer to me that all the ground work I have done for the stage in the last twenty years is not a one-way traffic. I have learnt to turn my head to check my blind spots, too.
Lim Woan Wen began her apprenticeship through the Singapore Apprenticeship in Literary Translation (SALT) programme, co-organised by the Singapore Book Council and Tender Leaves Translation, in June 2022. She only started flexing her translation muscles again during the pandemic, after a gap of two decades.
For the last twenty years or so, she has established herself in the theatre as a lighting designer, and has lit more than 200 projects, won multiple awards, and co-founded the design collective INDEX. She was conferred the Young Artist Award in 2011 by the National Arts Council, and made a site-specific and time-based installation Light Matters in collaboration with the sun, in the following year.
Born and bred in Singapore, she is fluent in English, Mandarin and Singlish, proficient in Cantonese, understands Hokkien, and speaks a smattering of Japanese, Malay, and Vietnamese.
©2022 Lim Woan Wen