Indigenous scholars update language of ‘Henry IV, Part 1′ in new production at Lewis & Clark

Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1″ follows the titular king as he prepares for war while his ne’er-do-well son Hal shirks — then ultimately accepts — his duties. The play deals with themes of violence, masculinity, power and leadership, all of which speak to Indigenous playwright Yvette Nolan. She recently updated the play’s language as part of Play On Shakespeare, an initiative that aims to make the Bard’s plays more engaging and accessible to modern audiences.

A production of Nolan’s translation opened last weekend at Lewis & Clark College and will run through Saturday. It’s part of a larger series of talks and performances taking place across Portland to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio. The play is directed by Waylon Lenk, a Shakespeare scholar and the college’s inaugural Native artist-scholar in residence. He and Nolan join us to share more about “Henry IV, Part 1″ and what Shakespeare means to them.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  Waylon Lenk is the inaugural Native Artist Scholar in Residence at Lewis and Clark College. He directed a new version of “Henry IV, Part 1″ that was written by the Native playwright Yvette Nolan. The play runs through this Saturday at Lewis and Clark. Yvette Nolan and Waylon Lenk, welcome.

Yvette Nolan:  Thanks so much.

Miller:  So Waylon first, for those of us who have either forgotten or never knew, just briefly, what is “Henry IV, Part 1″ about?

Waylon Lenk:  It’s about war and leadership. So King Henry IV has created a situation, by overthrowing the last king, in which heredity plays no factor in who gets to be king,

just military competency. So we’ve got Hotspur and the Percy family who are trying to kill him to become king. And he’s trying to cultivate a respectable heir in Prince Hal who, meanwhile, is goofing off with his buds at the Boar’s Head bar.

Miller:  Yvette Nolan, what attracted you to this particular play?

Nolan:  I really thought I loved the idea of how we make our leaders. And Hal, who’s hanging out in the boar’s head pub with his pals being a reprobate, eventually becomes the leader. He becomes the next king. But ugh, I thought that this was a kind of a heroic story about becoming a leader and how we step into leadership. But it turns out, what I discovered over the course of translating the play, is that Hal’s a bit of a jerk.

Miller:  In a way that’s juicy, from the perspective of somebody in the theater?

Nolan:  Of course, because those guys are always more interesting than bright shining stars. There has to be conflict. And he’s a really great sort of example of it. He’s doing things that princes should not be doing, like taking part in robberies and playing. He’s just really hanging out in the pub when he really should be preparing for leadership. And that’s what appealed to me about it. Plus it has Falstaff who is one of the great characters in all of the canon and the Shakespeare canon. He’s in several plays and he’s got some of the best lines, I think.

Miller:  I think you use the word translating when, if someone said, “What does translating mean?” I would have said, “Taking something from one language and putting it into a totally different language.” But that’s different, in some respects, from what you’re doing. So, can you describe how you approach the task in front of you?

Nolan:  Yeah, it is really like taking it from one language, which is an English common 400 years ago, and translating it to an English that people now speak. So it is translation in a sense. But for me, approaching the text was about how I make this clear to a 21st Century audience? How do I [translate] what is getting in the way of them staying with the story? Because we all know people who go to Shakespeare and when the language gets really gnarly, they check out. They start making grocery lists or fall asleep and I just didn’t want that.

I wanted people to be so inside the story that they just kept going. So I took out all the archaic jokes. I didn’t take them out. I just translated them to jokes that people will understand in 2023. That’s the kind of translation it is. References that made sense 400 years ago will now make sense, sitting in Portland, in the theater, watching Waylon’s production.

Miller:  Can you give us a sense, just briefly, of the original language and what you change it to, for any part that stands out to you?

Nolan:  Oh, jeez, I’d have to think about that. Waylon, do you have something at your fingertips?

Lenk:  I sure do. So, the first Shakespeare line is, “So shaken as we are, so wan with care, find we a time for frighted peace to pant, and breathe short-winded accents of new broils to be commenced in strands afar remote.” And the Nolan is, “Exhausted as we are and worn with care, and even as we catch our breath from war, yet and let us turn our sights on battles new, soon to be fought in far off foreign lands.”

Miller:  The newer version is a lot easier to understand, I have to say, as a 21st Century American English speaker. It’s hard to think of an English language author who is higher in the pantheon of dominant culture, a dominant white culture that has subjugated People of Color and Indigenous people around the world. At the same time, he is somebody who has given us indelible language and stories. How do you reckon with all that is Shakespeare, as a Native artist?

Lenk:  You want to start on this one, Yvette?

Nolan:  Sure. My mother was in residential school in Canada, two residential schools. And what she, for better or for worse, what she got from residential school was a love of learning. She had me when she was very young. She married my father right out of residential school. And we grew up learning things together. And what she taught me was that language is power. And you just said, he’s the pre-eminent guy, Shakespeare.

And when I was a child, a toddler, we watched a production of “Julius Caesar” because we were both learning the language. And that’s the thing I wanted, power over the language. Because if you have power over the language, you have power in the world. You can make people see and understand which is, I guess, why I’m translating Shakespeare. My mother knew that. She spoke Algonquin and then she spoke French and then she spoke English. She had three languages and she knew that having power over language was currency in the world.

Miller:  Waylon Lenk, what about you? How do you think about Shakespeare?

Lenk:  I go back and forth and back and forth. So when I initially encountered theater at all, it was through Shakespeare, and started doing theater. And so his works have had, overall, a positive effect on my life. And yet he’s not the only playwright ever. I mean, we have so many fantastic Native playwrights. And we should be doing our work, plays by Native playwrights, which in this instance we are doing. We’re getting a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

But there’s also the aspect of accents. So in English language theater, throw a stick and you’re gonna hit Shakespeare. If you wanna be a theater professional, Shakespeare is going to be something that you are going to have to do at some point. Unless you make a very definite choice not to and then accept the consequences to your career that would entail. So I think for Native artists just being able to do Shakespeare and to be able to handle the particular genres in which Shakespeare works, and the particular uses of language, [makes it] a sensible career thing.

Miller:  Waylon sticking with you, I’m curious. My understanding is that you and Yvette have worked on this play together on and off for a number of years now. But has working with the student cast now, at Lewis and Clark, given you a new lens to look at this work that you must know very well already?

Lenk:  Oh, absolutely. First of all, this is the first time that we’ve got it on its feet. We’ve had a number of readings, starting back when we started working on this in 2015. So our first reading might have been in 2016. But with the students, and on this production, one of the things I knew that we were dealing with was elements of gender. And what happens when the state is so heavily invested in militarized masculinity. What I’ve been finding in this production and working with these student actors, is just how very queer this play is and not even in subtext. I mean, there is subtext but also overt things.

Hotspur has a very erotic relationship with the idea of Hal. There is an insinuated queer through-line in the Boar’s Head. So the Boar’s Head is where Hal can retreat to be outside of this militarized masculinity, that he then invests himself heavily in, after he meets his dad. So these are the themes that have been really arising for me as I work on this play with this cast.

Miller:  Yvette, what about you? What are you hoping that audiences will be thinking about on the way home, say after they see your production?

Nolan:  I guess I think I want them to think about many things. One is how we elect our leaders, how responsible we are to the people who lead us. I want them to think about domestic politics versus “Henry IV.” It is also about making war away to sort of cover up your domestic problems at home. And that’s the thing, I think, we’re all grappling with right now. and just the joy of language. The joy of a clear story, clearly told, kind of galloping along. These are the things that we get from the theater together. We breathe together and our hearts beat together and that’s a community experience.

Miller:  Yvette Nolan and Waylon Lenk, thanks very much.

Lenk:  Thanks so much for having us.

Miller:  Yvette Nolan is playwright translator for the new production of “Henry IV, Part I,” which you can see through Saturday at Lewis and Clark College. Waylon Lenk directed the play. He’s a Shakespeare scholar. He’s also the inaugural Native artist scholar in residence at Lewis and Clark College.

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