Biography
Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994), born in Slatina, Romania, became one of the foundational figures of the Theatre of the Absurd alongside Samuel Beckett. Ionesco spent his childhood in France, returned to Romania for his education, and settled permanently in Paris in 1942. His first play La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano, 1950) emerged from his frustrated attempts to learn English from a phrasebook and became the template for absurdist drama: nonsensical dialogue, collapsing logic, the terror of cliché. Subsequent major plays include La Leçon (1951), Les Chaises (1952), and Rhinocéros (1959), the last a powerful allegory of fascist conformism. Ionesco was elected to the Académie Française in 1970. La Cantatrice Chauve has been performed continuously at the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris since 1957—the longest-running theatrical production in the world. Ionesco died in Paris in 1994.
On Stagelog
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