SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 21
SINE QUA NON
SCHOLAR: Technically, I9m up there too with you all, remember?
AUDIENCE: You9re just sometimes so studiously quiet and observant we forget you9re even
there.
PRACTITIONER: Judging us.
SCHOLAR: Taking notes. |eorizing. Trying to make sense out of the muck and mire of
everyday goings-on.
PRACTITIONER: Judging us.
SCHOLAR: If that9s how you feel about it, that9s how you feel. ***It9s your time.
PRACTITIONER (at the same time): It9s your time.*** |en why is it so crowded in here?
FEDERICO: You contain multitudes.6
PRACTITIONER: Very nice, Mr. Poet. Of course you9d pull out Whitman.
FEDERICO: Love that guy!
PRACTITIONER: No surprise there.
SCHOLAR: So now that the gang9s all here, what do you say I get another specioc example
of how this all works for you—for you all.
FEDERICO: We oght over titles.
PRACTITIONER: We don9t oght, per se, but I9m reluctant to lead the audience on is all.
SCHOLAR: Explain.
FEDERICO: He thinks it9s bad form to put my name on his work and thereby let the
audience think it9s getting the great Federico García Lorca instead of the no-name nobody he
fears is all he really is—or ever will be.
SCHOLAR: Is that true?
PRACTITIONER: A little heavy on the woe-is-me for my tastes but basically accurate.
SCHOLAR (to the Audience): And what do you have to say about this, now that we have you
with us?
AUDIENCE (starting in a singsong): Brand names bring all the butts to the seats, and butts in
seats is the name of the game with perishable goods like theater performances.
FEDERICO: It9s like airline tickets.
SCHOLAR: How so?
FEDERICO: |e plane9s going to ny empty or full, so whatever price you can squeeze out of
people by any means necessary is how you don9t crash and burn.
PRACTITIONER: Really? So graphic and yet so inappropriately literal-adjacent? And from
a poet no less? I expect better of you.
Federico sticks out his tongue at the Practitioner.
PRACTITIONER (under his breath): Juvenile.
SCHOLAR (forcibly focused on the Audience): So, having a known name on the show matters
to you?
AUDIENCE: Of course.
SCHOLAR: Even if you know that a translation isn9t actually the work of the person whose
name appears in the promotional material?
AUDIENCE: A translator9s job is to give us exactly what9s in the original. No changes. No
funny business. No nonsense. We can9t really trust them anyway, but who has the time to go
learn a foreign language? Everybody speaks English nowadays anyhow, don9t they? Why hassle
with gender-bending articles and moody verbs when translators will do the work for you and
barely charge you for the service? Lesser of two evils, you know?
SCHOLAR: Learning a foreign language is an evil?
AUDIENCE: Hey, are you judging us?
SCHOLAR: No. Just trying to understand your position.
PRACTITIONER: So, you can see how what you called
