一楼原文地址：
ｈｔｔｐ：//theater.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/theater/reviews/seminar-by-theresa-rebeck-with-alan-rickman-review.html

先汇报下，这篇好难。。。。。。 G头儿大神粗来救我吧！！！
原文和译文同时贴，不通的地方直接参见原文，有一个段落我直接放弃了，只可意会，难以言传（其实这货自己也没看明白是咩意思）

Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover,
but apparently you can come up with a spot-on appraisal just by eyeballing a
couple of sentences. That, anyway, is the impression left by “Seminar,” the
shiny, facile new comedy by Theresa Rebeck, which stars Alan Rickman as the
posturing celebrity teacher of a writing workshop.
也许你不能通过封面评价一本书，但读了些句子后显然可以做准确的评价。这就是《研讨会》留给人的印象，一出闪亮敏锐的新喜剧，由Theresa Rebeck编剧，Alan Rickman扮演写作研讨会装腔作势的名流老师。

Time and again in this play, which opened on Sunday night at the Golden
Theater, people pick up manuscripts that they’ve never seen before and, before
you can say Evelyn Wood, arrive at definitive pronouncements on the contents
therein. At first I thought these rushes to judgment were satiric, comments on
a culture of short attention spans and instant opinions.
这段各位看官请自行理解，呼唤时差党扑出来救我 

But it turns out that the characters in
“Seminar,” even the seemingly burnt-out Leonard, are religiously committed to
the sacred, endangered art of the written word. And if they seem a tad
overhasty in reacting to the works of others, it is only for reasons of
dramatic expediency. Ms. Rebeck and the agile director Sam Gold are well aware
of the market value on Broadway these days of hustling a comedy on and off the
stage in a breezy hundred minutes that needn’t pause for intermission.
其实《研讨会》的所有角色，即使那个表面上江郎才尽的Leonard，都虔诚的忠于神圣且濒危的文字艺术。即使他们看上去有些草率的对抗别人的作品，也只是戏剧性的权宜之计。Rebeck女士和头脑灵活的导演Sam Gold清楚的意识到了在百老汇推出百分钟无幕间休息轻快喜剧的市场价值。

The creation of art is notoriously
difficult to depict on stage (as in film), so leeway must be allowed those who would evoke this slow
and tortuous process in a brief, digestible narrative. But “Seminar” seems to be almost
nothing but shortcuts, and that includes the ways it defines and manipulates
its characters. Full
of efficiently mapped reversals and revelations, the play feels as if it were
written according to some literary equivalent of a mileage-saving GPS device.
众所周知舞台艺术创作要比电影难得多，要留一定空间把缓慢曲折的情节变成简洁明快的故事。但是《研讨会》却只有短篇，包括了各种定义和角色操控。充斥着高效绘制的反转和揭露，这部剧感觉像是根据节省里程的GPS仪器的文字说明而写成的。
（这段也翻得不知所谓，哎。。）

But it can’t sustain more than one thought
or emotion or effect at the same time. This is a problem when you’re portraying
those hopelessly ambivalent folk called artists, and you’re trying to parody
and celebrate your subject at the same time.
但是，一部作品不能同时表达过多的见解、情感或影响，在扮演绝望矛盾的所谓艺术家时，又要同时嘲仿和颂扬主题，就有难度了。

我先来顶 还在想肿么红老大木有粗线, 原来素在忙翻译

But that’s nothing compared to the verbal
flatulence that fills the air once Leonard arrives, trailing weary contempt and
sexual charisma. A once celebrated novelist, Leonard is now best known as an
exacting editor, teacher and grandstanding chronicler of life in danger zones
in third-world countries (Moldova, Rwanda, Somalia), where he stares down “the
most terrifying nihilism this planet has to offer.”
但是这一切和Leonard到来之后的气场相比，简直不算什么。空气中弥漫着一种厌烦性的轻蔑和性感的领袖气质。作为曾经的著名小说家，Leonard现在以严格的编辑、老师和哗众取宠的编年史作者（主要针对第三世界国家危险地区的生活，如摩尔多瓦，卢旺达，索马里）而闻名，这些地方被他称作“这个星球必须提供的最可怕的无政府主义”。

Leonard reserves his most annihilating
eloquence for shredding the egos of his students. (Kate’s offering is kissed
off as “a soul-sucking waste of words.”) And he demands that they ask tough questions of themselves like, “Am I creating a living, breathing cosmos with language, or am I just scratching at the wall of a cave?”
Leonard把他最具毁灭性的口才都留在了摧毁学生们的自尊上。（Kate的贡献就被以“浪费言辞”这样的话给回避了）他还要求大家问他们自己尖锐的问题，比如“我是在创造生活，用语言呼吸宇宙呢，还是只是在抓挠山洞的墙？”
(Kate’s offering is kissed off as “a soul-sucking waste of words.”)这句也不知咩意思。


I don’t know about you, but to me this
sounds like phony phoniness. I’ve met a fair number of self-aggrandizing
literary types (and yes, I’ve looked in the mirror), but they usually spin a
more convincing, and less generic, line of blarney than this.
我不了解你们，但是这些声音对我而言就像是伪造的虚假。我遇到过许多妄自尊大的写作者（是的，我照过镜子），但是他们通常能写出比这更有说服力且不普通的胡话。

Mr. Rickman — a first-rate British stage
actor known to mass audiences as that ultimate condescending educator Severus
Snape in the “Harry Potter” movies — is a virtuoso of disdain. And the audience
at the performance I attended all but squealed at each insulting crack of
Leonard’s critical whip. But even Mr. Rickman, at least until near the end, has
trouble making it seem that his character is anything more than a highly
varnished papier-mâché figure.
Rickman先生——英国第一流的舞台演员，因扮演Harry Potter系列电影中那位极度高傲的教育家Severus Snape而为广大观众熟知——是一位轻蔑（其实我很想翻成“傲娇”）大师。在我去看的那场演出中，观众对Leonard的每一记批判的皮鞭发出的辱骂式的俏皮话大声尖叫。但是即使是Rickman先生自己，至少在接近尾声的时候，费力的想让大家感受到他的角色本身而不是那个闪亮的纸型轮廓。

“Seminar” makes astute use of topical and intellectual references,
which are usually well known enough to make middlebrow audiences feel highbrow.
(Leonard’s withering summing up of “the detached tone of perplexed
intelligence” of fiction in The New Yorker got big laughs when I saw the show.)
And it provides some familiar sitcomish shtick as comfortable padding. (When Kate is
depressed, she gorges on potato chips and ice cream straight from the
container, just like Valerie Harper’s Rhoda used to do.)
《研讨会》精明的参考了实事和益智话题，这些已被广泛的认为足以使普通观众的文化修养提高。（在我观看的这次表演中，Leonard 毁灭的把纽约人的小说总结为“困惑智慧离群的声音”得到了观众的大笑声。）它也提供了一些熟悉的sitcomish 滑稽场面作为舒适的陪衬。（比如当Kate沮丧的时候，大嚼着薯片，直接从盒子里挖冰激凌吃，就像Valerie Harper的Rhoda那样。）

Mr. O’Connell and Ms. Park don’t overplay
the inherent cartoonishness of the patrician Douglas and the sexpot Izzy
(though I’m not sure either is ideally cast). And Ms. Rabe (a wonderful Portia
in “The Merchant of Venice” on Broadway) and Mr. Linklater give real comic
substance to skeletal parts.
Mr. O’Connell和Ms. Park并不去过火的表演贵族Douglas内在的卡通化，和Izzy的魅力性感（虽然我不确定哪个才是完美的角色）。Ms. Rabe（百老汇戏剧《威尼斯商人》中极好的波西亚）和Mr. Linklater在故事梗概中展现出了真正的喜剧本质。

Finally there comes a turning point, about
an hour and 15 minutes into the show, when Mr. Rickman is allowed to embody
something more than brisk intellectual sadism. Handed a really good piece of
writing by one of his students, Leonard responds with a quietly potent mix of
antagonism, humility, fear and something like joy.
最后转机来了，第1小时15分，当Rickman先生被允许表现一种不只是凛冽的智力虐待的东西，学生递给他一份真的很好的作品，Leonard则回应了安静且强有力的敌对，谦恭，恐惧和类似于高兴的一系列情绪。

Of course this mélange of feelings,
magnificently orchestrated by Mr. Rickman, is arrived at after Leonard has only
glanced at the first couple of pages of a vast manuscript. But for the first
time I felt an authentic rush of pleasure and the exhilaration of being
reminded that in theater, art comes less from landing lines than in finding
what lies between them.
当然这些复杂的情绪极好的被Rickman先生糅合在了一起，当Leonard只看了厚厚的剧本的前几页时，就展现出来了。但是我第一次感觉到真正高兴的冲动，和兴奋的被提醒到在剧院里，艺术不是来源于阶梯式的台词，而是台词中间藏了些什么。

最后一段也不知所云。
大概意思我明白了，就是LT扮演了一个傲娇的过气著名小说家（容我笑两声），他给抱着作家梦的4个青年人上写作课，然后极尽嘲讽之能事，打击得他们体无完肤。可惜鸟，最后他读了其中一位的大作，被秒杀了，于是瞬间涌现出了敌视、佩服、害怕而又有点儿高兴的复杂情绪（这是LT的强项啊强项），再也不像刚开始那样，只读到第一个分号的段落，就无情的奚落人家的作品，还发出了“终极便秘症状”般的鼻音（LT你是有多蛋疼啊）。

谢了妹纸，确实忙，来推个

交差了，欢脱的走了，亲们尽情的拍吧，偶就当木有看见啊木有看见

俺还在担心你会骂俺乱插楼了….还好