The Memorandum

The Memorandum

A well-known Czechoslovakian named Vaclav Havel originally wrote and revised the play in the early 1960’s. The first presentation of the play in the United States earned an Obie Award. The play takes place in an unknown office building where a new office language, Ptydepe is trying to be integrated into the office papers and procedures. Ptydepe is supposed to be very efficient but the process of getting it translated is overly complicated and quite near impossible. The whole play is about some manager who is trying to get a memorandum translated from Ptydepe to English so he can read it but no one can or will help him.

I personally thought this was the worst play I have ever seen in my entire life. As I’ve looked up information on the play I discovered that there is actually humor in the play. I must have missed those parts while I was asking myself how I could pay the University to make me go to such a terrible play. I didn’t even smile once during the play.

The play is famous because it has many metaphors and hidden meanings in it, but unfortunately I was unable to see anything. I am not involved in politics and history and so I just didn’t understand some of the things they said. I am still quite puzzled as to how the play related to our world cultures class. The only way I can relate the two is by comparing how language barriers can cause problems. There are many instances in the world where people who speak or use different languages have to try and get something accomplished. In The Memorandum, the Ptydepe language causes problems because people refuse to translate it and there are classes to teach people to translate Ptydepe but they are very secretive.

In the end I felt I had wasted my time, although The Memorandum was originally written by a person from a different culture, it really had nothing