DIRECTOR'S NOTES ON THE BALD SOPRANO

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means exactly what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

"The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of."
- Samuel Beckett

"Realism... falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination."
- Eugène Ionesco

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Eugène Ionesco was born on November 26th, 1909 in a small city outside of Bucharest, Romania. His father, Eugène Ionesco Sr. was a Romanian lawyer, and his mother, Thérèse Ipcar, was the daughter of a French engineer. Ionesco was taken to France as an infant but returned to Romania in 1925.

After obtaining a degree in French at the University of Bucharest, he worked for a doctorate in Paris at the Sorbonne. When World War II broke out, he was in Marseille, but he soon returned to Paris. He worked as a translator and proofreader. He decided to learn English and the formal, stilted phrases of his textbook inspired the masterly catalog of senseless platitudes that constitutes his first play, The Bald Soprano. Its first performance was at the Théâtre des Noctambules on May 11, 1950 under the direction of Nicolas Bataille. The play was not well received and closed after 25 performances. Nonetheless, in 1957, it was revived in repertory with The Lesson at the minuscule Théâtre de la Huchette, where they continue to play to this day.

Ionesco's subsequent plays include The Lesson (1951); The Chairs (1952); Victims of Duty (1953); Amédée (1954); Jack, or The Submission (1955);

The New Tenant (1955); Improvisation, or The Shepherd's Chameleon (1956); The Future is in Eggs (1957); The Killer (1959); Rhinoceros (1959); Exit the King (1962); A Stroll in the Air (1963); French Lessons for Americans (1966); The Gap (1966); Thirst and Hunger (1966); Fragments of a Journal (1967); Present Past Past Present (1968); Découvertes (1969); Killing Game (1970); Macbett (1972);

A Hell of a Mess (1973); The Man with the Luggage (1975); Antidotes (1977); Journeys Among the Dead (1980).

Ionesco spent his last years traveling and speaking out against censorship and the inhumane treatment of people around the world.

Eugène Ionesco died on March 28, 1994 in his residence in Paris. He was buried in the Cemetery of Montparnasse.