Introduction: What is the Connection Between Theatre and Languages?

According to Jeanne Balibar (2014), acting and experiencing communication in a foreign language allow us to feel free. But from what confines do they release us? And via what mechanisms? In an interview, the actress reveals what it is that, for her, makes the connection between foreign languages and theatre: both are an intimate encounter with the unknown, an experience within oneself of somebody else's words, rhythm and unique way of perceiving the world. Erving Goffman (1959) developed a theory of this language-theatre connection based on his observation of everyday conversations, in which he compared ritualised speech acts with 'cultural performances'; but his theory remains on the surface of language with its standards and conventions, and only gives us limited insight into the nature of how we co-construct meaning. As for the actress, she evokes her intimate world of theatre: to speak another language or do theatre is to live through the eyes of others and feel inhabited by their gestures, sounds and postures; it's for an actor to invent a fictional character and at the same time be invented by the thoughts and feelings of the character. It is to create a reciprocal resonance between self and other.

In essence, Balibar is speaking of empathy, Einfühlung. Used for the first time by the German philosopher Robert Vischer (1873), this term was taken up by the phenomenological movement in philosophy and psychology. Neurology is now uncovering the neural systems that enable us to have this experience of ‘other in self’ or of ‘self in other’, and showing that theatrical performance, like ordinary conversation, relies largely on invisible mechanisms such as kinaesthetic and emotional empathy.