Teachers
THE BALD SOPRANO
Eugène Ionesco's absurdist play features nonsensical dialogue in the hope to highlight how words have lost their meaning in modern society. This theme can be connected to various works of literature and even poetry. Here are some examples:
Ionesco's play, which was orginally written in French, has been been in continuous production at le Théâtre de La Huchette since 1957. Here are some videos discussing the history of the play and its relationship to the theatre.
Note: These videos are in French and and might possibly be comprehended only by fluent speakers of French.
Absurdism became a prominent artistic style after World War II when many people were horrified by the the bloodshed of the First and Second World Wars and consequently became disillusioned with life, questioning whether or not it had any meaning. The style also found its way into music through the use of discordant sounds and other methods. Arthur Schönberg's piece, "A Survivor from Warsaw" (found below) uses dissonant melodies coupled with spoken word to retell the account of a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising. For background about Schönberg's life, click here.
"A Survivor from Warsaw op. 46"
--Arnold Shönberg
At 38, Eugene Ionesco set out to learn English from a book called L’Anglais sans Piene (English Without Pain). He learned “some astonishing truths . . . that the floor is down, the ceiling up; things I already knew, perhaps, but that I had never seriously thought about or had forgotten, and that seemed to me, suddenly, as stupefying as they were indisputably true.” The speakers in this book talked a great deal—but they said nothing. Ionesco found this comical—but also vaguely disturbing. Here’s an audio clip of the Assimil method, for an auditory understanding of what Ionesco was reading.
