The Romanian-French Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994), one of the greatest exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd, was born in Slatina, Romania, but spent his childhood in France. He went back to Romania at the age of 26 to study French literature at the University of Bucharest but then returned to France in 1938 to complete his doctoral thesis. He lived in Marseilles for most of the Second World War, moving to Paris in 1944. His first play, The bald soprano, staged in 1950, satirises the fallibility of language as a means of genuine communication. Believing social language to be nothing more than cliches, hollow recipes and empty sentiments, Ionesco relentlessly criticised modern life for being meaningless and without purpose. His works lament a world that has lost its metaphysical dimension and a society in which existence has been stripped of its mystery. At the same time, they are a desperate plea for a reversion to a poetic way of looking at life. After his early one-act plays, The bald Soprano, The lesson, and The chairs, Ionesco wrote the full-length The killer, featuring the protagonist Berenger, who appears in a number of his subsequent works. In Rhinoceros, Berenger resists a mass transformation into the titular animal, in Exit the King, he confronts the fear of the unknown and of no longer existing, while in Stroll in the air he is able to fly and discovers another world. The killing game concerns the theme of death, with an entire city being wiped out by an epidemic, while Macbett – an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth – condemns all forms of power. Ionesco became a member of the French Academy in 1970 and was honoured with many distinctions and prizes for his work, which stands as a landmark in the history of the theatre.

 

A short list of his plays:
The bald soprano, The lesson, The chairs, Exit the King, Rhinoceros, Without wages killer, Hunger and thirst, The killing game.

 

- Oh, by the way, what of the bald soprano?
- She always wears her hair in the same way.
- Ah! Then goodbye, ladies and gentlemen. (The bald soprano)

 

- What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?
- Yes, but a man that turns into a rhinoceros? That’s not natural!
- Let’s not be too hasty… (Rhinoceros)