Laurie Live

[MTARR@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU]

Hi!

I had the pleasure of seeing Laurie Anderson live last year in Munich.  As
she has taken to doing when she goes to non-English-speaking countries, she
had translated her show into the language of the audience, in this case German.

Wow.  (Oder soll ich sagen, wow? :)

It was wonderful to sit in the middle of an audience filled with people who
were obviously "getting it" for the first time.  I wanted to ask some of
them how they came to be interested in her stuff if they couldn't understand
the lyrics, but didn't have a chance- we were all to busy with sensory overload.

The only problem the show had was a bad judgment call- she did "Hiawatha"
in the original English, and put the German subtitles up on the screens behind
her.  Then she did "Beautiful Red Dress" in German, which fell completely
flat, since in German the whole point got lost- there's no way to say

		For every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 63 cents.
		Now 50 years ago that was 62 cents.
		With that kind of luck, it'll be the year 3888
		Before we make a buck...

in German and have it make sense!  "Bevor wir ein Dollar verdienen" just
doesn't cut it.  The people in the audience understood enough English to be
able to catch the meaning, and if she had done it in English and provided
subtitles, like she did with the other song, it would've been awesome.  As
it was, it was a great disappointment, since this is my favorite on "Strange
Angels" and I was anxiously awaiting it live...

But the show as a whole was an amazing experience.  I admire her for taking
the immense amount of time and effort to translate everything- after all,
the emphasis in her work is the text, so what good is it if you can't understand
what's going on?  There are risks involved, however- she mentioned (and I
also heard this in an an interview) that when she was doing her Japanese
show she had everything translated and spent 4 months learning to pronounce
it phonetically.  Unfortunately, she didn't realize her Japanese coach had
a stutter until after the first Tokyo show, when her Japanese manager said,
Nice show, but tell me- you don't stutter in English too, do you?

Ooooops. :)

I hear she's touring again- anyone have a tour schedule?  Is she going to
be in the Northeast any time soon?  I'd *love* to see her again, so any tips
would be greatly appreciated!

:)
================================================================================
Meredith Tarr			"Oh yes I know I'm always falling,
mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu	 Gazing at hazy goldfish in your swimming eyes"
Wesleyan University						-Kate Bush
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