Questions of Language

This rozdział/chapter discusses multilingual dramaturgies in four productions: The blind poet by Needcompany (Belgium, 2015), Nie Mów Nikomu (Don’t Tell Anyone) by Scena Robocza (Poland, 2016), The Tree by Odin Teatret (Denmark, 2016), Saigon by Caroline Guiela Nguyen (France, 2017). The focus is on how they use diverse dramaturgical approaches to the process and the work to ask about unique ontologies of languages—beliefs about what language is, what it consists of that are embedded within a specific language—and their impact on how one experiences and narrates oneself and others as individuals, part of a community, and the world. The dramaturgies discussed interrogate how languages shape one’s engagement with difference and how various acts of displacement can shape engagement with languages. In addition, the productions test the limits of language’s ability to shape social reality, and propose ‘unknowns’ as modes for multilingual encounters, challenging ways for encountering differences based on racist, nationalistic, intercultural, (neo)colonial, or ableist discourses.