“I can’t believe anyone’s out in that flood,” he tells Celestina when they meet. “They’re calling it the storm of the century.”
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As Seattle actor Myles Joseph Romo performs the lines of Aníbal during a recent matinee performance of Cloud tectonics at Seattle’s 12th Avenue Arts, white letters appear on a television screen to the left of the stage: “I can’t believe there’s anyone out there in this flood. They are calling it the storm of the century.”
The Spanish translation is not included in the stage notes for the 1995 magical-realist play by Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera. It’s an addition from Seattle’s Sound Theater Company, part of a Spanish-subtitled initiative in collaboration with Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre, hoping to make the show more accessible to Spanish-speaking audiences.
Sound Theater is offering Spanish subtitles on four performances of Cloud tectonics (co-produced with local theater organization Earthseed), including its closing night performance (October 15, 7:30 p.m.) at 12th Avenue Arts. At Seattle Center, Book-It is presenting the show In the time of butterflies, playwright Caridad Svich’s adaptation of the novel by Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez, in which she traces the famous resistance of the Mirabal sisters against the brutal Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Book-Po offers Spanish subtitles during two performances of In the time of butterflies (until October 16, performances with Spanish subtitles, October 15, 2:00 p.m., Center Theatre).
Subtitling is common in opera, with English surtitles displayed over the stage, and English subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing community is gaining some traction in cinemas (although progress is slow). But initiatives with Spanish subtitles for game shows are rare in the US
While Seattle has a deep history of bilingual theater, thanks to community theater groups like eSe Teatro and a strong contingent of local Latino and Latino playwrights and producers, Sound Theater and Book-It’s joint project will most likely mark the first time that local theater organizations are offering Spanish Subtitles. The move puts the organizations at the forefront of a nationwide effort to make theater more accessible to non-native English speakers, immigrant communities and audiences of color.
“Making room for other languages, even if you don’t understand them, is a big step for our city,” says Ana María Campoy, director of In the time of butterflies. “It’s also a step for these arts organizations to acknowledge the communities they’ve been ignoring and start actually making an effort to serve them and welcome them.
