Twin Cities actors versed in the 'Trek' tongue will perform 'Hamlet' scenes for a special disc
By Dominic P. Papatola
dpapatola@pioneerpress.com


Commedia Beauregard — the guys behind the local annual holiday staging of "A Klingon Christmas Carol" — will boldly go where no small St. Paul theater has gone before: to Hollywood.

More accurately, Hollywood is coming to the Twin Cities this month to film company members performing scenes from that other Klingon classic, "Hamlet."

The footage will be one of the extras in the release of the "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" on Blu-ray Disc. That unveiling is timed to coincide with the May opening of a new "Star Trek" prequel in theaters.

(Note to non-Trekkies: "Undiscovered Country" features Christopher Plummer as General Chang, the Bard-quoting bad guy, as well as the timeless quote: "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.")

"I got an e-mail from Paramount about three weeks ago," Commedia Beauregard artistic director Christopher Kidder said. "And I delayed as long as I could responding, since I was positive it would be a cease-and-desist order telling us we couldn't do 'Klingon Christmas Carol.' "

But the studio behind "Star Trek" had something else in mind.

"It turns out," Kidder said, "that we are in the unique position of having a crew of actors that can pronounce the stuff."

Though the characters are imaginary, Klingon is, according to its proponents, a fully functioning language, created by linguist Marc Okrand in the 1980s. A translated version of the whole of "Hamlet" exists,but the Commedia Beauregard folks will only do a couple of scenes.

Local actor Garry Geiken will render the timeless "taH pagh, taHbe' " speech — sometimes known as the "to be or not to be" soliloquy. Then he, Kidder (as Horatio) and Matthew Glover will re-create the gravedigger scene.

"That's the one with 'Alas, poor Yorick,' " Kidder said. "They wanted that, because they wanted to use a Klingon skull."

Kidder said he couldn't discuss the particulars of Commedia Beauregard's financial arrangement with Paramount, except to say that for the small company, it is a "remarkably lucrative" deal that will pay the actors and significantly bolster the company's bottom line.

"Negotiating with Hollywood is not what I thought I would be doing when I started a small theater," he said. "And I don't want to be known as the company that just does Klingon stuff. But if it pays for the rest of the season, it pays for the rest of the season."


TOUGH TO TRANSLATE

As with any translation, working English into Klingon is not a precise process. Translating "A Christmas Carol" into the guttural warrior tongue was especially problematic for Commedia Beauregard, since the Klingons have no gods and no Christ, hence no Christmas. The title of the play translates roughly as "Feast of the Long Night Song" and could most closely be understood to be more of a winter solstice carol. Here are a few other translations from "A Klingon Christmas Carol":

A Christmas Carol: ram ni'tay bom

Tiny Tim: tImHom

Bah Humbug!: baQa'

Let it snow!: jupeDmoHpu'

Gift: nob

And in case you were wondering, the phonetic spelling of Christmas in Klingon is QIStmaS.

— Dominic P. Papatola