Dec 24, 2009

The Memorandum | Themes

Absurdity
The Memorandum is a play full of absurdities, most related to Gross’s problematic memorandum. The language that the memorandum is written is at the core of the absurdity. Ptydepe is an artificial language that is supposed to be more efficient for office communication. Yet the language is cumbersome, repetitive, and hard to learn. Only a few at the office actually know it. The absurdity grows as Gross tries to get the memorandum translated. A catch-22 of bureaucracy prevents anyone in the organization’s translation center from actually translating the...