Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses continues Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 3 pm; through Aug. 9 (no performances July 3-4). Tickets: $18. Pacific Resident Theatre, 707 Venice Blvd., Venice; 310.822.8392 or pacificresidenttheatre.com.

In addition to being a prolific playwright, Peter Mellencamp also translates Bertolt Brecht (Baal and Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses) and Jacques Brel (15 of his French songs). His original plays include Struggling Truths, first produced in LA at the Odyssey Theatre when it was nominated for the LA Drama Critics Circle’s Best New Play of the Year award, and Relative Madness, workshopped at Pacific Resident Theatre where he is an Associate Member.

He has had several screenplays under option and is a member of the Story Analysts Union. He is a screenplay judge for the annual Humanitas Prize and has been hired several times as an expert witness for litigation involving screenwriter credits. His Masters Degree in Cinema Production and Screenwriting is from USC and he has a BFA in Theater Arts from Boston University.

His new translation of Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses, Brecht’s 1930 political bookend to Happy End, examines the American economic system in immediate and amazingly applicable ways. Directed by Michael Rothhaar (his direction of  PRT’s The Hasty Heart received an LADCC Award for Best Revival), the cast includes Robin Becker, Ed Levey, Linda Lodge, Andrew Parks, Tony Pasquaini, Daniel Riordan, Norman Scott, Penny Safranek and Dalia Vosylius.

LA STAGE: Since you previously translated Brecht’s Baal, did you find a difference in translating his Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses? Which play did you find more challenging to translate?

Raila Vosylius and Andrew Parks

PETER MELLENCAMP: Yes, there was definitely a difference. Baal was Brecht’s first play, which he wrote before he was exposed to socialism and communism. It’s very raw, very chaotic; it’s about a poet who crashes through life consuming all the experiences he can, regardless of the consequences for himself and others. There’s quite a bit of poetry in the play; I did that translation more than 25 years ago and it was my first experience with translating poetry. And I found that I liked it. (By the way, my translation of Baal will be produced at the Sacred Fools Theater early in 2010.) Both plays were challenging to translate but I would say Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses was more so because it’s a more complex play.

LAS: When you are doing a “new” translation of a play, how aware are you of previous versions? Do you try to make yours more accessible to audiences?

PM: Yes, I’m aware of previous translations but generally I’m not impressed by them–which is why I decided to do my own. Well, actually I decided to do my own translations because both times I was asked to–but it seemed worthwhile because I found the other translations to be too literal: they had translated Brecht’s words rather than what he was communicating and the result tended to be stilted dialogue, and a lack of clarity in the story. And yes, I definitely try to make my translations more accessible to the audience –that’s my primary goal.

LAS: Some people think an “Americanized” version of Shakespeare’s plays would make them easier to understand by a wider audience. Do you feel that would not only ruin the classic language but also the rhythm and flow of his plays? If you were asked to do so by a respected theatre artist, would you simplify Shakespeare’s text?

PM: I’ve never heard of that notion but it’s intriguing to think about. I find I appreciate Shakespeare’s plays in performance far more if I have taken the time to read them beforehand and familiarized myself with the difficult language; if I haven’t done that, I get lost fairly easily and I have to rely on the acting and the visuals to help me follow what’s going on. Would Americanizing Shakespeare ruin the classic language? Yes, obviously, and Shakespeare is considered the world’s greatest writer so re-writing his plays would bring a hell-storm of wrath down on whoever does it! That said, I suppose if I were asked to do it by the artistic director of a respected theater–and if I were offered a nice chunk of change, I would do it. The challenge would be fascinating, and in any case that artistic director would have to take most of the heat!

LAS: Tell us about translating Brecht’s songs. Do you keep a rhyming scheme?

PM: Yes, of course I keep a rhyming scheme–that’s part of what makes a song a song. In Baal, some of the poetry can be sung but I prefer to keep it all spoken partly because in our culture, singers can become famous and successful but poets are ignored and unknown, at least until after they’re dead, and that’s appropriate for the story of Baal.  As for Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses, the play was never produced in Brecht’s lifetime, and as far as I know, no music was written for the songs; also, all of the songs are sung by the Warriors of God characters (essentially the Salvation Army) so I decided to translate the songs so that the lyrics would fit the melodies of traditional hymns and spirituals such as “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” I think using those melodies results in an irony that would meet with Brecht’s approval. The music conjures up images of poor people looking to God for salvation but those images are subverted by the subtext of the lyrics and their context in the play.

LAS: What other translations have you done?

PM: I have also translated 15 songs by the French singer/songwriter Jacques Brel. I directed a private cabaret evening for friends that was very successful but we can’t do a genuine production without getting the rights from Brel’s estate in Belgium.

LAS: How many original plays have you written?

PM: Four full-length plays and several short ones.

LAS: Tell us about Struggling Truths and why you wrote it?

PM: Struggling Truths is my most successful play so far. It’s had productions in five cities around the country but not in New York yet, so it’s still a struggle to get it noticed.

It’s very complicated to describe, so here’s a synopsis I wrote about it: “Struggling Truths explores the political, ideological and spiritual conflicts which resulted from the collision between Communism and Buddhism during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. At the start of the play, a young Tibetan man becomes a Buddhist monk and later chooses to fight the Communist invaders despite his vows of non-violence. His sister, after being abused by corrupt ruling-class Tibetans, joins with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army when they invade Tibet. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama is thrust at a young age into the role of political and spiritual head of his nation. He must walk a tightrope of diplomacy as he tries to keep the Communists and the Buddhists from going to war. The play is narrated by a mercurial, mischievous Buddhist lama, who casually reincarnates himself so he can participate in the lives of the other major characters, orchestrating their stories to make sure they proceed in the right directions. As the play progresses, tensions mount as the friction between the factions grows stronger.

As for why I wrote the play: it has always seemed to me that the root cause of almost all of the major conflicts in the world is the strong tendency humans have to make a decision about what’s true and what’s false, and then defend that stance to the death even though their neighbor has a different notion of what’s true and false. And I wanted to explore all the implications of that tendency. (Also, I thought the basic story of Tibet at that time, and the Dalai Lama’s story, were very dramatic.)

LAS: Since Relative Madness was workshopped at PRT, has it had any other productions? What is its storyline?

PM: Relative Madness hasn’t yet had a full production, though it’s gotten close a couple of times. Here’s a short synopsis: “A fledgling psychologist has to analyze his militantly eccentric brother to find out if, as their conservative sister claims, he’s dangerously insane and should be locked up. The two brothers are experts at pushing each other’s buttons; during the tense examination (in the jail where the wild brother is being held), both are forced to confront issues in their lives as well as skeletons in the family closet.”

LAS: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses?

PM: Yes, the production at Pacific Resident Theater is wonderful: it’s very theatrical and it’s funny, dramatic and terribly timely.

Peter Mellencamp’s Translator’s Note from the program: “In 1930, when Bertolt Brecht wrote this play, the Wall Street stock market crash had just occurred. As recently as 2007, the cause of the Great Depression was a distant, vague memory but today, it’s “déjà vu all over again” and this play seems amazingly (and dreadfully) timely. It’s about business tycoons destroying the economic system they themselves created and then bailing themselves out. It’s about wealthy people cynically using the religious fervor of working people to keep them ignorant and under control. It’s about us, today. I tried to translate the text using punchy American vernacular instead of the stilted language often found in translations of Brecht’s plays; the result, I hope, will be what he intended: theater which is immediate, entertaining, thought-provoking and maybe even mind-changing.”

Feature Image courtesy of Peter Mellencamp. Story Image 1 and 2 by Alex Moy. Story Image 3 by Vitor Martins.