International students tend to have a reputation for being reclusive, hermits in the nests of their rooms who emerge occasionally only to scurry to the closest shower. If it wasn’t for that thin sliver of light under a door you’d be tempted to believe they didn’t live in college at all. So many times I’ve heard questions like “Where do they eat?” or “How do they get to and from lectures with no one seeing?” bounced back and forth over dinner in hall.
This, at least, was what I heard before arriving at Oxford. And what I was told again in the Freshers’ guide, and by the second years, and on just about every student forum out there. It seems to be a running joke across the colleges, but since I’ve been here I’ve been involved in a project that suggests just the opposite.
The name alone of the Oxford Spanish Play implies that it is an international affair; it’s quite obvious that it branches out beyond the stereotypical born and bred British Oxonians. This year the company’s production, a dual language version of La vida es sueño, or Life’s A Dream, by the Golden Age playwright Calderón de la Barca, is produced by Alejandra Albuerne, who is as Spanish as they come. But the countries involved extend far beyond simply Spain itself; the directors, Theresa and Luis, hail from Chile, whilst several of the cast members come from other parts of the Hispanic world such as Mexico.
Yet somehow the international feel of the production, which will be performed in the original Spanish, with English subtitles, has prompted foreign students with no affiliation to Spain to get involved. From Italian to American, Russian to Chinese, there is no shortage of diversity in the production.
Perhaps this is because plays which are in English feel more inaccessible to those with a different first language. After all, Oxford has bred the likes of Alan Bennett and Oscar Wilde, so doing anything theatre related here feels pretty pressurized. What’s more, the more academic student productions tend to be dominated by students of English Literature, enough to make a budding dramatist from abroad run a mile. With the Spanish play all the actors are in the same boat; save the (surprisingly small) numbers of Spanish actors, everyone is performing in a foreign language.
There are over 130 different nationalities in the undergraduate body alone at Oxford. But if we continue spreading the myth of the cloistered international student, we risk losing the richness that we could benefit from by living in such a multicultural university. People come from round the world to study here. Foreign languages are the perfect medium to encourage integration: they are a great unifier and equaliser, just as theatre is supposed to be.
