A young woman searches for her voice in a new language and culture. For her, it’s not just about learning new words; it’s about finding the confidence to use them.

BY LILLIA SMICHENKO

IMAGE BY ANNA BONDARENKO

“God I’m nervous. Are you nervous?”

Of course I was nervous, and that question certainly did not help. I honestly answer, “Yes.” My classmate, Stephanie and I started to hold hands to make ourselves tremble less.

I peeked behind the curtains to see the auditorium filling up with people while we were getting ready.

Some popular music was playing while we waited for the audience to sit down, which hyped me up even more. My heart was pounding in my palms, in my ears and in my chest, ready to jump out from excitement.

Stephanie and I were standing behind the heavy red velvet curtains, and checking who had already showed up to support us. Everybody was here: my friends, my teachers, and my mom. She even brought our neighbours, Nahman and Dafni with her. I wondered what they were all thinking. They were talking and looking at the stage with three beds as decorations. In a few minutes, it would all turn into the psychiatric hospital from Girl, Interrupted and I could not wait to show it.

But what if I messed up the lines or forgot them? What if they heard my Russian accent while I was saying my lines in Hebrew?

The lights went off. It was show time.

I could barely see myself backstage; all eyes were on one spot of light in the middle of the stage. Our Theatre Arts teacher was announcing us already. I didn’t really hear him. My legs were shaky, and I was breathing rapidly.

I was only a second away from taking that first step on the stage, and I felt adrenaline rushing through my body. I wanted to get out there as soon as possible.

The lights went off again.

***

But how did I get here?

I moved from the Ukraine to Israel with my mom when I was 14, which meant I had to do a cultural shift while still being in high school. I had to get used to the people, traditions, and language there. Simple things became a struggle for me. I didn’t want to go do the groceries, because I was afraid of not understanding something while cashing out. One time, I went to the grocery store with my mom and it was the beginning of the Shabbat. Shabbat starts every weekend on Friday evening and ends Saturday evening. During that time, everything is completely closed in the country and people pray and have family dinners. It’s like a small celebration every week, and that’s why people greet each other at the beginning of Shabbat saying, “Shabbat Shalom,” even if they don’t know each other. I didn’t know about this tradition until that day. On our way out of the store a nice man opened the door for us, and my mom said, “Shalom Shabbat” to him instead of “Shabbat Shalom.” She realized it was wrong right after and he corrected her. It reminded me that I could make the same mistake, and I didn’t even try to speak Hebrew because of that. I was afraid of making a small mistake, and then having to explain that I am a new immigrant, which was already more words than I knew at the time. And just like that, ordinary daily chores became some of the most difficult things.

I couldn’t speak Hebrew at all, but just in case, I learned a few phrases, such as:

How much does it cost? (Kama ze ole?) כמה זה עולה

How are you? (Ma nishma) מה נשמע

And the most important one:

I don’t speak Hebrew. (Any lo medaberet ivrit) אני לא מדברת עברית

I was still terrified to speak it. I was afraid to make a mistake or to hear an answer I wouldn’t understand. In a way, learning a new language in a new country was like being on the stage when no one had given you the lines. All eyes are on you, and you have to figure out what to do.

When I was in 10th grade, I finally started to see development in my language. I transferred to a new school, where I wasn’t the only new immigrant, which created a more comfortable environment for me to speak Hebrew. On the first day of school, my teacher came up to me and asked me about myself. She was very nice, but a little intimidating, so I did my best to explain who I was and my background. When I answered in Hebrew, I realized she understood everything I said and that I knew a lot more than I thought. When I was walking back to the class a great sense of achievement went through my body, like I had a winner’s glow and a golden medal around my neck. I had the same type of glow later when we had a Hebrew language test. I scored one of the highest marks in the class, which was a surprise for both me, and my classmates (who were also new immigrants).

One day my classmates and I were sitting in the auditorium for some important announcements. Halfway through, I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying.

“We have to pick an extra subject that we want to take this year and maybe for our final exams,” Marina translated from Hebrew to Russian. “We have Music, Theatre Arts, and Agriculture.”

Spoiler alert: I chose Theatre.

From what I understood, we had to choose on the spot, and the teachers asked us to raise our hands if we wanted to choose Theatre Arts. I wasn’t sure, but I still raised my hand. As I found out later, I didn’t have to take it, unless I was planning on studying it after school. However, I thought it would help me be more confident and that it would enhance my language skills.

Studying Theatre wasn’t all fun and games. For the most part, we had to sit and learn about theories and history, which was way more difficult in a foreign language. Most classes I just sat there not understanding most of it, which made me feel very discouraged. I felt like I was wasting my time. I sat there in the front row, stared at the board full of material on theatre, but words weren’t coming together; they didn’t make any sense to me. Forty-five minutes turned into hours of boredom that I would never get back. I was in a room full of native Hebrew speakers, and I felt like a stranger. At some point I even wanted to quit the class. I didn’t see the progress and I just felt like I was wasting my time.

One time we had a field trip only for the theatre class, which included a lot of acting workshops and a play by the end of the day. Different theatre kids from all over the country came to exchange their knowledge and gain some experience. When I was at the workshop, I didn’t even feel like talking at all, because I wasn’t confident in my language skills. I was trying to say as little as possible, and for the most part I couldn’t even understand what we were doing, let alone improvise or participate. Every time it was my turn to speak I would say the most basic thing or repeat something someone already said, because that’s what people do when they learn new languages. We repeat the words and phrases after native speakers, we try them out, taste them in our mouth, see how they sound and where they fit in the speech. After the workshop, when it was time for the play, I fell asleep, that’s how bored I was. I had no idea what was happening on the stage, and it didn’t seem to end. After that day, I had so much doubt about whether I should continue studying theatre at all. I thought: “Maybe it was too much for me and there was no way I could do theatre in a foreign language.”

But this is exactly the thing with learning: you might not see the progress yourself, but others do. After a year, I started to receive compliments on how my Hebrew improved; without realizing it, I learned new words and phrases, and that meant something. My reading improved, I was able to talk in front of the class using new words, and a lot of people asked me for help with their Hebrew. The big test on theatre theory was coming up, which meant I had to learn a lot of material and use my own words in Hebrew to prove my knowledge. The test was on everything we learned and saw, and obviously I was stressed. Theatre theory felt more difficult than the practice, and I wasn’t sure if I could get a good grade on it. Nevertheless, I studied extra hard, asked twice as many questions in class, just to make sure I understood everything I needed to. As a result, not only did I pass the test, I got 90 out of 100 points. It was a big relief, but the final exam was yet to come.

Meanwhile, senior year was approaching, and we had to put on a whole play all by ourselves, which for me, meant reading a whole play in Hebrew… all by myself. Before that, I was just doing small scenes. And of course, I was putting the reading of the play off, because I was sure I couldn’t do it. I tried to read the play, but just like in books, the play used more sophisticated, difficult Hebrew that I couldn’t understand. While I was reading, I couldn’t understand what was going on in the play. I translated many words that I stumbled upon in the first pages, but that didn’t help at all. Instead of a beautiful meaningful sentence, everything came out like: “the axe the ceiling grandmother stuck.” So I gave up. I thought I could learn my lines later in the process, and that not reading the whole play wouldn’t be a problem, since we were going to read the scenes during the rehearsals anyway.

After a week, the Theatre Arts teacher, Barak, came in.

“So how are you guys doing on your plays? How is the progress?” he asked.

While everyone was answering, I tried to stay off the radar, although I wasn’t very successful.

“How are you doing, Lily? Did you read the play?” asked Barak.

“No,” I answered.

He took me out of the class to talk to me in private. While he was lecturing me on how irresponsible I was, in my head it was all in slow motion. You know, like in a movie, where the important part happens so fast they have to slow it down to see all the details, but they still put intense classic music, like Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights to keep the pressure. He was emotionally moving his hands; and I was frozen, almost speechless, not having enough vocabulary to express what I thought. I wanted to say that, I didn’t intend to be so irresponsible, and I didn’t want to let anyone down. But our conversation was already over and, with burning shame, I went back to the class where everyone had heard it all.

“If you want, I can help you to read the play,” whispered Stephanie, who was sitting right next to me, “what he did was not fair.”

I gratefully accepted the help and for the next few days, Stephanie came over to my house to read the play Girl, Interrupted together. I was stumbling on words I couldn’t pronounce or understand, but she was there to help. Slowly but surely this part was done and I moved on to the rehearsals.

It took me a while to learn all the lines. I was rehearsing lines everywhere: on the couch, in the lounge, on the bus, between classes. When we were performing the first scenes in front of the teacher, I was kind of nervous because I wasn’t confident in my lines or my acting. We had to do my first scene over and over again because the lines just flew out of my head every time I entered the stage. It was hard to understand the complexity of my character, and to show the intensity of the play, while still learning the language. However, I continued working on both. One day we were rehearsing on stage at the auditorium, and the teacher focused a lot on my character, which was Daisy Randon. We talked about who she was, and that I needed to show that she was very child-like because of her trauma, what her mental health issues were, and so on. This completely changed my acting and helped me understand what I was doing. I started to portray this little, damaged girl and all her words made more sense after that. The play was supposed to be 30 minutes long, and I always wondered how theatre actors memorized that much text. But with time I did memorize all of it. We spent hours and hours after school, sometimes even wasting our time because someone was late, rehearsing, adjusting the light, and choosing the right music.

I rehearsed my first scene where I had to be punched in the stomach, and it turned out to be fun. I had to lay on the ground with my back to the audience, and Stephanie who played the sociopathic Lisa, was fake kicking me with her legs. The trick was for her to stop her leg right before the stomach, and for me to act as if I was just kicked. I think she was even more scared to hurt me than I was. However, we did great, and both Stephanie and I couldn’t wait to show this tense moment in front of the audience.

The whole school year we were working not only on our acting, but also on music, lighting, decorations, clothing, and what not. We were rehearsing after school, on weekends and holidays, as the day of the performance was approaching.

We were done, which brings me to where I started: at the beginning of our play.

When the play started, I transformed into a new person, just like I transformed while learning Hebrew.

When I was on stage performing my first scene, that one scene I couldn’t memorize before, it was the peak of my adrenaline rush. Not only me, but also everyone else was nervous and excited at the same time. I felt this tension, the air was electrified, and the actors who were in the play with me were hyped too. We all wanted to give our best on the stage, and because of that, our acting was a little bit different from the rehearsals. It was the energy we received from the dark part of the room, and the energy we gave back.

Stephanie entered the stage to kick me just as it was planned (but no one knew that except us). I fell on the ground in just the right position, and Stephanie started to kick me, and she accidentally hurt my thigh. The audience gasped, and I even think I heard my mom. We continued, she didn’t hurt me that much, but it was really unexpected. Next up was my funny line, and honestly, I didn’t even think it was funny. During the rehearsals no one ever laughed. At that moment, right when the audience was so invested, I said the line. My voice echoed in the auditorium, and everyone was listening carefully to every word I said, and they all started to laugh, which made me want to laugh too. A small muscle near my mouth flinched but I didn’t break character.

 ***

After the performance, I heard a lot of compliments on how good my acting was, and how much my Hebrew improved. However, one comment really stuck with me.

I stood on the stairs of the auditorium, with the flowers that my family gave me. The audience was leaving the room, and the principal came up to me.

“You’re Lily, right? Your performance out there was extraordinary, especially for a non-native speaker. I didn’t know you were so talented.”

I thanked her, and she hugged me and then continued walking down the stairs. These particular words stood out to me because she didn’t have to say anything, she could’ve just walked away. She was not my family, or a friend, and was not obliged to say anything. Yet she did, and it was an honour to me.

I put myself out there, something I was so afraid to do in the beginning. I was the centre of attention for everyone to see all my flaws, my accent, and my mistakes in language. I opened the door for everyone to peek in, and what they saw was not my accent or my weakness, but a strong confident person who achieved their goal.

After all, this is the experience that theatre gives you; it shows you a look into another person’s life and maybe, just maybe, you take away something for yourself.

Learning Hebrew transformed me, built my character and every time I use it, it’s like a different person is talking.

Liliia Smichenko is an international student from the Ukraine, studying journalism. She moved to Israel when she was 14 years old, and knows four languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, and English.

An earlier version of this story was originally created as part of Humber’s WRIT 400 course.

Image: Anna Bondarenko,The Voice, digital painting, 2020.

An earlier version of this story was originally created as part of Humber’s WRIT 400: Literature and Composition 2 course.

Edited for publication by Danielle Plant, as part of the Creative Book Publishing Program.

The HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by the Applied Research & Innovation.