'Valentina': when children act as translators for their parents

BarcelonaLanguage has always been an important issue for playwright and theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen (Poissy, France, 1981). Daughter of a Vietnamese mother and a father pied-noir Born into Algerian Jewish heritage, the artist grew up in a home where many languages were spoken, and she didn't always understand them. "My mother decided not to teach me Vietnamese, but she only spoke that language. I needed interpreters to understand her," Guiela explains. The experience stayed with her for many years and resurfaced, especially when she worked in countries with languages she didn't speak. A few years ago, she came into contact with Turkish, Georgian, and Romanian interpreters for hospitalized patients, and it was then that she decided to transform all these experiences into a play. Valentina It's a contemporary fable starring a young girl who must translate from French to Romanian for her mother. The show, one of Teatre Lliure's international offerings for this season, will have three performances in the Sala Fabià Puigserver on January 9, 10, and 11.

"When migrants don't have access to interpreters, they are often forced to use their children to communicate. Children learn the language of their host country much more easily, thanks to school, as their brains are much more malleable. I wanted to write a story about all of this," Guiela points out. The protagonist of Valentina She is a 10-year-old Romanian girl who takes on a task full of responsibility. Her mother has a heart condition, and the doctors—French—tell her she must remain calm, avoiding strong emotions. Valentina's mission will be to ensure her peace. "To protect her, she will have to decide whether to tell her the truth or lie," Guiela explains. For her staging, the director has worked with non-professional performers. Three of these performers are the three child actresses, who alternate in the performances. All three speak French and Romanian and have had the experience of their mothers acting as translators. "They have a strong intellect, given, in part, that from a very early age they have communicated in two languages," Guiela emphasizes.

A Tale with a Miracle

Valentina It takes the form of a story—in fact, it has also been published in print by the French publisher Singulier—because the playwright wanted this tale to contain "a miracle." The story is inspired by real witnesses, but it is fictional, and Guiela plays precisely with that on stage. "The set design includes a heart that never stops beating and a golden wall reminiscent of the walls of Orthodox churches," says the playwright, who currently directs the National Theatre of Strasbourg. For her, the Teatre Lliure is a familiar venue: she already performed there in 2019 with Saigon, a show about the Vietnamese exile in which she was already beginning to explore the communication difficulties faced by migrants. "It's a subject that is close to my heart and, inevitably, resonates in my work," Guiela says.