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Kiira Elisabeht Benzing ’07 (Ridgewood, N.J.) not only wants to act, but to be a “theater maker,” creating theater in every aspect from directing to writing to crafting scene design. By the time the curtain falls on her honors thesis, she will have taken a huge leap toward achieving her goals.
A performance studies and French double major, Benzing has translated the 16th century French play Sotise a Huit Personnaiges from Middle French into English. Olga Anna Duhl, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, guided Benzing through the translation process.
Now that the translation is complete, her thesis shifts to a more theatrical aspect under the guidance of Michael O’Neill,associate professor of English and director of theater.
Benzing has been accepted to present her work at the 21st annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research April 12-14 at Dominican University of California in San Rafael. Approximately 2,200 undergraduates from more than 250 colleges and universities will attend the three-day event.
“The thesis was born out of the creativity of Professor Suzanne Westfall [professor and head of English] midway through my sophomore year,” Benzing explains. “I’d been looking for a thesis since freshman year and wanted to do something that has never been done before. Professor Westfall also helped me sculpt my interdisciplinary major in performance studies, which encompasses music, film, art, and its concentration in theater. When I approached Professor Duhl, she suggested La Sotise; she knows the text by heart and is the leading scholar on it.”
Benzing worked on the play’s opening monologue in Duhl’s medieval French course several years ago, so she was already familiar with its structure.
“I found it very challenging, but fascinating,” she says. “The play is very different from the majority of contemporary plays I have worked on in the College Theater department. I spend most of my time in the theater on the stage acting, so it’s very interesting to work from the inside of the text outwards.”
Because Middle French is no longer spoken, Benzing found the translation challenging, but she knows her hard work will pay off.
According to Duhl, her 2005 critical edition book of Sotise A Huit Personnaiges [Le Nouveau Monde] (Sotise Played by Eight Characters [The New World]) was the play’s first publication in modern times, a project that was six years in the making. It is a type of satirical play that featured characters dressed in fools’ costumes, which protected the actors from censorship and being pursued by French authorities.
“It is an amazing play, and Kiira is handling it very well,” Duhl says. “We are doing an adaptation and deciding which parts of the play should be rewritten and not translated word by word. The issues are so different from those that we deal with today. We are trying to adapt it to a modern audience.”
In December, Benzing shared her work at the Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies held at Moravian College. She presented her research and three actors performed lines from her translation.
Benzing has taken full advantage of the opportunities Lafayette offers in theater, performing in College Theater productions of American Dreams, The Cherry Orchard, Far Away, You Can’t Take it with You, The House of Blue Leaves, Into the Woods, and The Rivals. She also has pursued opportunities off campus, including a semester spent working at the O’Neill National Theater Institute in Waterford, Conn., which included a two-week workshop in St. Petersburg, Russia.
“I believe Lafayette has been the best environment to nurture the growth of this thesis,” Benzing says. “The professors care so much about the individual here and have helped me in every sense to explore all my dreams. Observing theater from my study abroad experience has already influenced my goals for the staged reading, and my sense of theater learned in the past year, as well as in classes at Lafayette, has certainly helped me as I play the new role of ‘translator’ this year.”
Benzing plans to pursue a master’s degree in theater, and to “never be severed from the stage.”
O’Neill believes she’s well on her way to achieving her goals.
“Kiira is very bright and absolutely dedicated to work in the theater,” he says. “She has traveled extensively, and has enhanced her theater education at Lafayette with work at a number of prestigious organizations. She sets very high goals for herself and achieves them. The thesis work should help make Kiira’s plans to study theater in graduate school into a reality. Not many students interested in performance will have the credentials Kiira’s thesis gives her.”
Benzing has studied abroad in France for the special three-week Lafayette course examining the novels of America’s most renowned expatriate writers. She is a past recipient of the Gilbert Prize, which is awarded annually to students who demonstrate superiority in English. She is a member of Five Actors in Search of a Director, Delta Delta Delta sorority, and Le Cercle Francais (French Club). She also is founder of the Angels 4 Children Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps underprivileged youth achieve their scholastic and professional aspirations.
Honors theses are among several major programs that have made Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. The College sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year; 21 students were accepted to present their research at last year’s conference.