Fake It Til You Make It


Making bubblesFederico is a man with the head of a camel who is trying to become a liver salesman in Dubai. He is at the airport with his mother and a man named Smedley, who is pretending to drink gin, but is having a problem pretending it when he’s on his roller skates.

This is a big problem, especially for Federico, since he just sold his falafel stand to a group of hippies from Detroit. Smedley leaves the airport to become an auto mechanic and dies while eating liver in London.

Nobody is happy about this, so they board the airplane with a bag full of money and waffles.

If my Czech is correct, this perfectly describes the plot of the play I am watching.

I have learned one important rule as an English language teacher – context is king. This not only applies to language learners but to everyone. Imagine if someone on the street handed you an article with no explanation or headline and expected you to extract the main point in a short amount of time. You may be able to do it, but it would take a while.

This surely holds true for the visual arts. If we don’t know the context to a piece, even if there is no language barrier, we have trouble following the meaning or the plot. If any of the above scenarios occur in a language you don’t speak fluently, then buckle in because you just entered flavor country.

I have a front row seat in flavor country Saturday night.

We are watching a play called Nebe Nepřijímá (Heaven is Not Accepting). The play is made up of five small individual plays, most of which are linked and take place in an airport. All of the plays are inCzech.I am able to follow four of the plays, whose context is somewhat clear and they employ accessible language. The final one, however, is Avant-garde, abstract and full of roller skates and people in animal costumes. Parlay that with actors speaking like human Gatling guns on PCP and I am following the dialogue with the calm collected manner of Tony Montana at the end of Scarface.

When I ask K what is going on, she replies with a shrug. My God, we are doomed. So, I do what any neurotic English teacher seeking enjoyment in something utterly confusing and trying not to pee himself would do: I create my own context. And so I create the story you read above about Federico, his mother and Smedley. Federico does have the head of a camel and there is some theme to do with liver (Title: Ja V Praze, Jatra V Londýně – I am in Prague, My liver is in London). But whether they are discussing liver as the tasty dinner option or the detoxification organ is not clear.

At the end of the play, we find that the real story is about a boy whose mother is Czech and his father is from Dubai. The boy does hate liver, and so he runs out outside during dinner and gets hit by a car. Then his mother donates his liver to a Pakistani boy who is represented by the camel-headed gent. Smedley never appears, but someone does “snědl jatra” which means “eat liver.” One of the guys did drink make-believe gin while running around on roller skates; I think he sold falafel in Detroit. Or suitcases in Pilsn. I can’t be sure.

In any case, I like my version better.

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