Soulpepper (SP) 
How long have you been working on this translation? 

Susan Coyne (SC) 
Just since September – that's when Soulpepper approached me. And I didn't have the draft I was supposed to translate until January. 

SP
That's a short time to do your work.

SC
Yes, and no. I have somebody who's telling me what it is that I'm doing, and that's László (Marton, the director). My job is really to figure out a play for László to direct in English. He has the lore and the history, the vision and the sensibility for the play. I'm just figuring out English words for the relationships, scenarios and situations in the story. 

SP
So it's a translation that isn't? 

SC
In a way. The draft László sent me is a literal English translation, which is taken from a Hungarian translation from the original Russian. So it's a little like putting on rubber gloves, sticking your hands into a bag, feeling around, and then drawing a picture of it. (Laughter) And right now I'm so far into it I really have almost have nothing to say. (Laughter) 

SP
So how are you approaching this complex task? 

SC
Well honestly when I read the first unwieldy translations – I read a few English language versions of the play in the fall – I thought, "I don't get this play." But László has really helped me to see and understand it. He says it's like Platonov (by Chekhov, which Ms. Coyne adapted, along with Mr. Marton, for our 1999 season). It's the work of a young genius. Turgenev has amazing instincts but he doesn't really understand the form of a play, in a sense. He's a novelist writing a play. So László worked on the text in Hungarian, and he's pared away a good deal of it to uncover something simpler and more direct. My impression, having got to the core of it, is that it's very sweet, unusual and quite delicate. Very modern or maybe I mean timeless. So I'm enjoying it. And the situations are – I understand the comedy of it now too. I think. (Laughter)  

SP
I know you and László are working on Skype, with him in Budapest and you in Toronto. What do you sort through together? 

SC
Looking at the literal translation, sometimes I literally don't understand the line. The choice of words is too ambiguous so sometimes I have to ask him to clarify a particular line. And that can lead to a discussion of the situation, and it often turns out that I've misunderstood something. There's a lot of subtext in the play, moments where characters are taken aback and don't know what to say in the moment so what they come up with is inadequate, or awkward. In my work with László as an actress playing Chekhov, he's taught me as an actor that you have to always, as he says, be brave enough to confess the face while losing it. What he means is the face you have just before you pull yourself together and recover from a blow. The face you wear at the moment of shock, when you are completely vulnerable. Turgenev's characters are like Chekhov's: they are amazed to discover the depth of their own vulnerability. Most of them are completely without guile, caught unawares by their feelings – incredibly intense summer storm kind of feelings that come out of nowhere.  

SP
Have you found many similarities between Turgenev and Chekhov? 

SC
Yes, it's amazing, really, but Turgenev was first. I like the play because it doesn't moralize about the characters' feelings or try to explain them away. Natalya is a young woman who's completely blindsided by this passion and Turgenev doesn't try to justify it, or psychologize it away. Like Chekhov, he's a very non-judgemental writer, very compassionate to all his characters. The only character he does judge is the cynic, Schpigelsky. 

SP
They say you can't be wise and in love. 

SC
Turgenev's very funny on the subject of people falling in love – he calls it “this famous feeling.”  And for Natalya, the discovery is: it's awful! This famous feeling makes you so vulnerable, it exposes you so ruthlessly. Rakitin, for example, is hopelessly in love with Natalya, and it causes him so much pain. He says to Belyaev: “I guess you think it's the greatest thing in the world to be in love.” But Turgenev resists coming to an easy conclusion and that's why the text is so multi-layered: sometimes the characters can only hint at what they feel. There's a mystery to these things.