The Interpreters


The Interpreters trilogy takes as its subject the dramaturgy of translation and the act of interpretation to think about worlds within words and the question of context. Presented in three separate instalments that each shift the audience imagination and play with displacement of text, image and experience and the absence and presence of context, and the translation from story to theatre to film, the trilogy begins in 2022 with the premiere of The Interpreters.


Language as sound, words as images.


Nicola Gunn wants to find her French voice. As a writer seeking to translate a story from English to French, she engages a French translator who turns out to be not who she had in mind. Questions soon emerge around authenticity: who is translating who and what is it to be someone else’s voice? Their many exchanges occur in and around an imagined Paris. On a dark stage, language becomes sound and words become images.

Since 2020, Nicola Gunn has been talking to French translator Séverine Magois about the dramaturgy of translation and the act of interpretation. Their numerous conversations, hundreds of hours of talking, have all been recorded. Through their many exchanges – in a Paris apartment, on a zoom call, wandering through Luxembourg Gardens, in a moving car during a rainstorm, on an evening stroll in Maine –  questions start to emerge around authenticity: what has been constructed, who is translating who, and what is it for someone else to be your voice.

The audience are invited to experience The Interpreters as an ambisonic performance installation, set almost entirely in the dark. With almost no visual information, except the images that form in the audience’s imaginations, the work is built around intimate dialogues that have been painstakingly constructed from 4 years of recorded material. A choice between words has been made; thoughts and meaning re-contextualised; sentences built – sometimes word by word; and a completely manufactured sound environment in order to blur the line between fiction and documentary.


“One of my immediate thoughts regarding this piece is this idea that we are our own interpreters. That we spend our whole lives trying to interpret our thoughts and put them into action… And how many of our interactions with other people are about us attempting to translate ourselves to each other and the space, or spaces, that occur in the process…”



Concept, Direction and Composition NICOLA GUNN
Performance SEVERINE MAGOIS and NICOLA GUNN
Sound Composition and Ambisonic Configuration THOROLF THUESTAD
Sceneography A-WORKS ARCHITECTURE (CRISTIAN STEFANESCU and KATIE ÅTLAND)
Light Design EMMA VALENTE


Co-produced by BIT-Teatergarasjen, Black Box Teater and Rosendal Teater. Funded by Norsk Kulturrådet, Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Bergen Kommune and AsiaTOPA Festival through the Playking Foundation. Residency support from Carte Blanche, BEK (Bergen Elektronik Kunstsenter), KMD (Kunst Musik Design) and through Bergen Kunsthall’s Live Studio residency programme.