Word: ptakovina
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Dates: during 1969-1969
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Perhaps the freshest play is Ptakovina, by Milan Kundera, who is one of those fighting to keep the writers' union committed to the liberalization program of 1968. Kundera's novel of Czech Stalinism, The Joke, has the directness of a fist in the face; it has been made into a film shown at Cannes this year. Ptakovina is a made-up word, literally "Birdtrick," meaning stupidity...
...malicious sexual satire about a headmaster who seduces the mistress of the local political chairman. But Kundera gives the work countless double meanings aimed at conformists, informers, party bureaucracy and jargon, the security police and the Russian occupation. Played with snap and brass by a young experimental company, Ptakovina keeps audiences constantly off balance with laughter. But the most resounding applause comes without a laugh when the headmaster tells his own fiancee that he hasn't the heart to be a hypocrite any longer; that "I've lost my second face." "Better find it again," she warns...
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