Songs, plays, and movies can make us fall in love with a culture that’s not our own. But sometimes those products aren’t the most authentic. One scholar is studying the case of a 20th century jukebox musical that fits that mold.
In the 1950s and 60s, Jacques Brel took the French speaking world by storm. His elevated pop music featured cynical, lovelorn masculine personas. In 1968, two Americans translated his songs and plugged them into a musical called Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Think Mamma Mia, but no Meryl Streep film adaptation.
Daniel Smith is an associate professor of theatre at Michigan State University. He’s also a visiting scholar at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville. On Friday, Smith visited the University of Georgia as a part of the 2025 UGA Humanities Festival. He presented his research on the musical before a small crowd of students and community members.
“Language is the primary way we communicate with people, and translation in theatre in particular allows us to access other cultures in a way, but always through the lens of our own experience. The idea of engaging authentically with this material is important to do.”
The musical hasn’t been officially staged since 2017, but something about it caught Smith’s eye.
He focused on some of the issues that emerged when Brel’s songs were translated from French to English. According to his analysis, the playwrights inserted American references as they translated—like a line from the Star Spangled Banner. He adds this manufactured a certain nostalgia for American audiences.
The adaption of Jacques Brel’s music offers lessons for translators, Smith says.
“We could think about what does a translation look like? In these Jacques Brel examples, the American translation becomes the way people know these songs in English, so it supersedes the French version.”
The musical has been dormant for seven years. Still, for this scholar and French-language enthusiasts on the UGA campus, it is alive and well.
