''The Universal Language'' is a short

comedic play A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between characters and intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from ...

written by

David Ives David Ives (born July 11, 1950) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is perhaps best known for his comic one-act plays; '' The New York Times'' in 1997 referred to him as the "maestro of the short form". Ives has also written ...

. The play is part of the collection of plays called ''

All in the Timing ''All in the Timing'' is a collection of one-act plays by the American playwright David Ives, written between 1987 and 1993. It had its premiere Off-Broadway in 1993 at Primary Stages, and was revived at Primary Stages in 2013. It was first publi ...

.'' The show features two characters, Don and Dawn. Don is a

con artist A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers ha ...

trying to swindle customers into learning a fraudulent language, Unamunda, and Dawn is a shy 28-year-old woman with a

stutter Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...

. Through the course of the play, Don and Dawn learn about each other and themselves, and fall in love.

Plot synopsis

Dawn di Vito wanders into an office, hoping to learn Unamunda, an

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

-like language. Don Finninneganegan, the inventor of the language, appears suddenly, speaking rapidly in the made-up language. Dawn becomes confused, thinking she has the wrong address. Don manages to reassure her that she is in the right place, despite the language barrier. Dawn quickly becomes fascinated by Unamunda, and agrees to pay $500 to learn the language. Soon, Dawn is as fluent as Don, and she notices that the stutter she once had is gone. She vows to speak only Unamunda, but Don seems upset by this development. When Dawn tries to pay for the lesson, Don stops her and reveals his intention: to con people out of their money by teaching them a fraudulent language. He doesn't want anyone to laugh at her for learning the language, and tries to convince her to stop speaking Unamunda. She refuses, telling Don that the language is more than just a method of communication; it is also a bond of love shared between the two of them. Don realizes that he loves Dawn and gives in. The two share a kiss, and as they are about to kiss again, a man knocks at the office door, asking if he is at the School of Unamunda. The new couple welcome in the next student.

Productions

''The Universal Language'' premiered

Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer th ...

at the

Primary Stages Primary Stages was founded in 1984 by Casey Childs as an Off-Broadway not-for-profit theater company. In 2004, Primary Stages moved from its 99-seat home of 17 years at 354 West 45th Street to the 199-seat theater at 59E59 Theaters. In 2014, the c ...

in 1993, as part of the short one-act plays of ''All in the Timing''. Dawn was played by Wendy Lawless and Don was played by Robert Stanton. The play was directed by Jason McConnell Buzas. ''All in the Timing'' was revived in 2013 at Primary Stages, including ''The Universal Language''.

Unamunda

Unamunda itself is based on words in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

, as well as

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

, and the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

."English-Unamunda Dictionary" http://dartmouth.edu/ Date accessed: November 3, 2012 Many of the words in Unamunda are

false cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engli ...

s. For example, the word for "people" in Unamunda is "peephole" and the word for "carry" is "cargo." A full translation of all the words can be foun
here

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Universal Language Constructed languages Plays by David Ives One-act plays 1993 plays

Plot synopsis

Productions

Unamunda

See also

References