Taking Swedenborg to Sweden, in English!

We are taking Night Visit to Sweden, to the Ljungby Berattar (storytelling) festival. Ljungby is a small town in southern Sweden, with a very beautiful museum – sagomuseet – dedicated to stories.

We will do two performances of Night Visit. The last performance will be followed by seminar, where I have been invited to join Swedish writers and academics to discuss Swedenborg’s ideas.  I am honoured to tell Swedenborg’s story in English in Sweden! I hope the Swedes don’t find it too strange. Although Swedenborg did much of his writing in London, and wrote in Latin! I do hope the audience will be able to follow the performance in English.

 When I perform in other countries I usually learn some vocabulary and weave it into my performance. I have learned Swedish words for previous shows at Ljungby. Doing this can turn into a spontaneous conversation with the audience about translation with audience members disagreeing about the correct translation of a word. Night Visit is a complex layer of stories and genres – biography, history, poetry, myth, visions. The piece sits on a backing track of my Grandfather’s voice, and this determines the timing of everything. There is no space for anything extra. So for these performances I will only be able to speak English. I also wonder how a Swedish audience will relate to descriptions of particularly British aspects of society and culture during the two world wars?

 But I have noticed that while listening to tellers performing in other languages, a strange thing occurs, I am able to visualise the stories – to see images and feel emotions and atmospheres. Visualisation is connected to processes beyond words, and can surpass the boundaries of language. This does demand more effort on the part of the audience though. So I hope the Swedish will be open to me bringing Swedenborg back to them in English, and come with us on this strange journey into the other world.