Languages of Love: The Swiss Stage Bards’ Love’s Labour’s Lost

Abstract

The Love’s Labour’s Lost film produced by the University of Fribourg is built on the concept of linguistic variety. The film was produced by the Swiss Stage Bards, a performance group that translates Shakespeare into all of the dominant languages of Switzerland (German, French, Italian) under the direction of Elisabeth Dutton, weaving those languages together with Shakespeare’s English into films that shift easily back and forth between different languages. Set and filmed at the University of Fribourg, the film highlights using the linguistic variety of Switzerland to highlight aspects of character and plot through language changes and codeswitching. The company balances careful and subtle translation that takes advantage of the repetitive patterns in Shakespeare’s language with the use of humour, music and gesture throughout the film to create a distinctly local Shakespeare that can be understood in a global context. While the production is defined by linguistic complexity, the Swiss Stage Bards use music, gesture, costume, and repetition to help audiences follow the plot even if they cannot understand the shifting languages with the same ease that the characters do. Using Shakespeare and languages to explore the challenges of love and communication, the film demonstrates how language can establish solidarity, create distance, assert power, and build connections.