Download Eugene-Ionesco

Eugene Ionesco
Theater of Absurd
By Anca Cighi
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Eugene Ionesco was a
famous playwright of
the Absurd Theater
His works concentrated
on the solitute and
insignificance of one’s
life and ridiculed the
most banal situations of
life
Biography
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Eugene Ionesco was born on November 26, 1909, in
Slatina, Romania
He’s real name is Eugen Ionescu
He’s father was Romanian, but the origins of his
mother are not known for sure
According to some historians, the mother of Eugene
Ionesco, Marie-Thèrèse Ipcar/Icard, was the daughter
of a French-Protestant engineer who moved to
Romania to work on the railroads.
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Though born in Romania, Eugene spent his early
years in France, where his father, Eugene Senior,
earned a law degree
His parents were eventually separated by the first
World War; mother remained in France with the
children (Eugene had a sister) and father returned to
Bucharest
After a while, Eugene’s mother thought her husband
dead, for he gave no sign of his whereabouts
But Eugene Senior remarried and claimed the custody
of his children, evoking abandonment; this is how
Eugene and his sister returned to Romania
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During this time, the relations with his father
were bad, and in 1926 Eugene left his father
house and moved with his mother, who by then
was also living in Bucharest
Eugene learned Romanian and found it a
beautiful language
In 1928 he had his debut as a poet in Bilete de
papagal (parrot-notes), which appeared daily
and was famous for its tiny format.
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In 1929 the young poet
was enrolled in French
literature studies at
Bucharest University
He was an excellent
student and since
university he began
publishing his works
and literary criticism
While there he met Emil
Cioran and Mircea
Eliade, and the three
became lifelong friends
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During University he became acquainted with Rodica
Burileanu
He published his first article (on Ilarie Voronca) in the
Zodiac review in 1930
In 1931 he wrote Elegii pentru fiinte mici (Elegies for
tiny beings) (poetry) influenced by Francis Jammes.
Between 1928 and 1935 he wrote articles in the
reviews Vremea (Time), Azi (Today), Floarea de Foc
(Flower of Fire), Viata Literara (Literary Life),
România Literara (Literary Romania), the weekly
antifascist magazine Critica, Axa (the Axis), Fapta
(the Fact), Ideea, Româneasca and Zodiac.
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July 8, 1936 Eugene married Rodica and in 1938 returned to
France, with his family (their daughter, Marie-France Ionesco,
was born)
Ionesco never again saw his father and this is what he last
recalls:
"The last time I saw him, I had completed my studies (...) and
was married (...) He believed in the State, no matter what it
represented. I did not like authority. I detested the State. (...) In
short, at the end of our meals together, we were at sword's
point with each other: at one time in the past he had called me
a Bloshevik; this time he called me someone who sided with
the Jews (...) I remember the last sentence I ever said to him:
"It is better to be on the side of the Jews than to be a stupid
idiot! "
Eugene Ionesco’s works
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He wrote absurdist sketches, to which he gave the
description of "anti-play" (anti-pièce in French)
They express modern feelings of alienation and the
impossibility and futility of communication with
surreal comic force, parodying the conformism of the
bourgeoisie and conventional theatrical forms.
Ionesco rejects a conventional story-line as their
basis, instead taking their dramatic structure from
accelerating rhythms and/or cyclical repetitions.
He disregards psychology and coherent dialogue,
thereby depicting a dehumanized world with
mechanical, puppet-like characters who speak in nonsequiturs.
Language is rarefied, with words and material
objects gaining a life of their own
The Bald Soprano
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Also translated as the Bald Prima Donna (French
original title La Cantatrice Chauve)
It is Ionesco’s first play (one act play), written in
1950
Ionesco first got the idea of the play while learning
English with the Assimil Method; he was intrigued by
the fact that there are seven days in a week, that the
ceiling is up and the floor is down; things which he
already knew, but which suddenly struck him as being
as stupefying as they were indisputably true
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The play is about the Smith’s, a traditional family
The whole play is full with non-sequiturs
The audience gets the impression that the characters are not
even listening to each other
The play expresses the lack of communication in modern
society, or its futility
It was directed by Nicolas Bataille and first played on May 11,
1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules.
The Bald Soprano was received by the majority of critics with
dismissive reviews and was not well attended. After 25
performances at the tiny Theatre des Noctambules, it was
closed.
Since 1957 it has been in permanent showing at the Théâtre de
la Huchette, which received a Molière d'honneur for its
performances.
It’s one of France most famous plays nowadays
La Lecon (The Lesson)
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Written in 1951, also a one-act play
This play has three characters: the professor,
the student and the professor’s maid
The action is simple: the professor gets more
and more angry with the student’s ignorance
and the students grows more and more timid
The professor kills the student and the play
ends with the maid receiving a new student
Les Chaises – The Chairs
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Written in 1952, it is an absurdist tragic-farse
This play has two characters: Old Man and Old
Woman
It is also full of non-sequiturs
The setting is on a deserted island, where the two old
people arrange chairs for some imaginary guests and
talk to eac hother while the ‘guests’ arrive
A 1998 production of this play was a success in
England and moved on to the John Golden Theater on
Broadway
Rhinoceros
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Three-act play, written in 1959
All of the 17 characters, even the secondary members
of the cast, have well-defined and distinct
personalities.
The main character, Berenger, is criticised by the
people around him for drinking too much and for his
tardiness, but he is the only character from the play
that does not surrender and transform into a rhino.
The play depicts Ionesco’s horror of ideological
conformism, inspired by the rise of the fascist Iron
Guard in Romania in the 1930s
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The play was first delivered via BBC radio in August 1959,
first staged in Dusseldorf in October of the same year (at the
Schauspielhaus, directed by Karl-Heinz Stroux with KarlMaria Schley as Berenger), premiered first in Paris in 1960
and then at the Royal Court in London (directed by Orson
Welles with Laurence Olivier)
The play was adapted for a 1973 film (also called Rhinoceros)
directed by Tom O'Horgan and starring Zero Mostel and Gene
Wilder.
the 1961 Broadway production that caused Ionesco
unprecedented celebrity. With Eli Wallach as Berenger and
Zero Mostel as Jean (for which Mostel received his first Tony),
it was directed by Joseph Anthony and produced by Leo Kerz.
Considering the great number of languages into which the play
has been translated, and ongoing international interest in
producing it, it is perhaps surprising to find that to date the
country in which it has received the most number of
productions (if not performances) is the US
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The play was performed in Bucharest, at the Teatrul
de Comedie only in 1964, as Ionesco’s works were
banned in Romania
The play contains an ironic self-reference:
JEAN: [to BERENGER] Instead of squandering all
your spare money on drink, isn't it better to buy a
ticket for an interesting play? Do you know anything
about the avant-garde theatre there's so much talk
about? Have you seen Ionesco's plays?
BERENGER: [to JEAN] Unfortunately, no. I've only
heard people talk about them. (...)
JEAN: [to BERENGER] There's one playing now.
Take advantage of it.
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"Anyway, Berenger is, I hope,
above all a character. And if he is
time-resistant, it will be because
he has proved himself as a
character; he should, if he has any
real worth, survive even after his
"message" has become outdated.
Poetically, it is not his thought but
his passion and his imaginative
life that will matter, for his
message could quite as well be
delivered now by a journalist, a
philosopher or a moralist,
etc....The interest we may take
today in a particular attitude, in
spite of its human importance,
takes second place to the
permanent importance of art."
Other writings
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Ionesco also had theoratical writings, mainly as direct
response to his critics
The famous ‘London Controversy’: critic Kenneth
Tynan, after first praising the Bald Primma Dona,
later, in the pages of The Observer, withdraws his
favorable opinion and chastises Ionesco's plays on the
grounds that they are not politically correct
"M. Ionesco's theatre is pungent and exciting, but it
remains a diversion. It is not on the main road: and
we do him no good, nor the drama at large, to pretend
that it is..."
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He also explains his view of how theater should be:
"I have attempted...to exteriorize, by using objects,
the anguish of my characters, to make the set speak
and the action on the stage more visual, to translate
into concrete images terror, regret or remorse, and
estrangement, to play with words (but not to send
them packing) and even perhaps to deform them-which is generally accepted in the work of poets and
humorists. I have thus sought to extend the idiom of
the theatre."
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He also states in his theoretical writings that as a
child he hated going to the theater, but that the first
theatrical encounter in which he recalls having
delighted is the puppet show in the Luxembourg
Gardens.
At about the age of four "I ...could stay there,
spellbound, all day long. But I did not laugh. That
Punch and Judy show kept me there open-mouthed,
watching those puppets talking, moving and
cudgeling each other. It was the very image of the
world that appeared to me, strange and improbable
but truer than true, in the profoundly simplified form
of caricature, as though to stress the grotesque and
brutal nature of the truth....until I was fifteen...[e]very
live show awoke in me this feeling for the
strangeness of the world..."
Honors and awards
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He received numerous awards including Tours
Festival Prize for film, 1959
Prix Italia, 1963
Society of Authors Theatre Prize, 1966
Grand Prix National for theatre, 1969
Monaco Grand Prix, 1969
Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1970
Jerusalem Prize, 1973
honorary doctorates from New York University and
the universities of Leuven, Warwick and Tel Aviv.
He was made a member of the Académie française in
1970
Quotes
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Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us
together.
I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or
remembering, whether I have lived my life or
dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me
profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of
the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.
A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.
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Ionesco died on March
29, 1994 at the age of
84
He is buried in Paris, in
Cimetière du
Montparnasse
The inscription reads:
“Pray to the I don'tknow-who: Jesus Christ,
I hope”
Bibliography
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www.wikipedia.com
http://www.ionesco.org/vie-en
http://www.untitledtheater.com/Productionlist.
html
http://www.reacttheatre.org
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/
eugene_ionesco.html