TRANSLATING LOLA
by Margo van de Linde
“Ok, I will be the client and you will be me.”
Translating Lola is a live talkshow, a double portrait and a game. Two women who work in the arena of sex and seduction translate their roles.
Amongst many other things, Margo is a theatre director, an ex-stripper, a romantic. Amongst many other things, Lola is an ex-criminologist, a prostitute, a mother.
They met by chance the day they caught each other framed by the glass of a camera phone and a Red Light District window.
For over a year Margo and Lola worked together via a translator to explore their positions towards topics such as sex, power, desire, ethics and womanhood. The eventual performance took their first encounters as inspiration for the form: sitting around a table discussing the things they had in common, and the things they did not. The table functioned on several levels as the heart which allowed them to move from into different spaces and types of play that represented and challenged their beliefs.
Some moments were scripted, others improvised. All of them had in common that they were shaped under the influence of the present – Translating Lola was a document in transition.