A fascinating conversation when Joanna O. who volunteered to translate the play into Polish, asked me about this line:
ANNA
The first fear came out of the blue, over water—
Joanna asked:
what blue? the mood? or literally? sometimes these lines come all of the sudden, out of context, that i feel slightly confused 
and my answer:
sure, it can be confusing, they come out of context so that it feels like these different characters all experienced the confusion at the same time. sometimes they understand it, sometimes they don’t, but they are all feeling the same kind of limbo.
in the case of “blue” , however, it can translate to “out of nowhere” — out of the blue is an expression shortened from “out of the clear blue sky” meaning that it came suddenly. is there another expression in polish that has a stronger meaning than just came suddenly? it doesn’t have to translate literally in this case.
This interpretation came up with our Deaf West co-production, too, especially since ASL uses fewer words than we do and the repetition that I use as a device in the play doesn’t work the same way in ASL.
I remember that we had an entire conversation about a line that the Nurse says to a woman whose husband is about to die from acute radiation poisoning: “You are sitting next to a reactor.” To a hearing audience, that means (in the context of the play) ‘You might as well just sit next to the Chernobyl reactor as sit next to your husband; he is just as radioactive and contagious.”
For the ASL audience, our Voice said the line as is but Catherine, our deaf actress, signed “He is very contagious.”
That kept reminding me of a line I heard in Eastern Europe: “All wars are due to bad translation.”
That’s really what made me want to learn ASL. Once I mentioned that to my cast, half of them immediately signed up, along with Amy Hendrickson, the understudy, and two of our audience members! Caitie Hannon, my assistant director for the whole festival, hooked us up with Sonya Wilson, who is a fabulous instructor in ASL. We learn deaf culture as well as signing. It is more fun and eye-opening and TIRING than most things I have tried so far.
I also learned another valuable lesson: when collaborating so that your project can reach a deaf audience, add closed captioning into everything. It seems obvious, but it isn’t something we think about because WE don’t have to. By simply adding closed captioning, you can reach even more people, and hopefully earn their respect as well. Enci, who is heavily involved with Chornobyl but who also is filming a short film this summer (Rebel Without a Car Productions), has insisted on the closed captioning for not only her film, but also for the documentaries leading up to the filming.
Just fascinating new ways of looking at the world.