In recent years, the A.R.T. has staged Schmidt's versions of Euripides' The Bacchae and Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities . With its difficult language and cultural distance, many people believe Racine's play to be untranslatable. He was taken with the actresses' ability to make an unnatural verse form sound natural. It could never sound like street talk, but these great actresses were able to bend the language so that the emotions and passions of the character were fully conveyed despite the alien quality of Racine's verse.
Many translators make the mistake of trying to translate the rhyme scheme of the original.
Schmidt steers clear of this approach. A staunch pilgrim in his quest to develop a new American vernacular, Schmidt is adamant about writing in an American style. For decades, the whole thrust of American poetry has been against rhyme. In translation, it simply comes out as laughable and does not sound like poetry at all. Because the American language is not predominated by florid expressions, Schmidt sees it as vital that the actors who speak his lines sound like living human beings to an American audience.