 "Photo: Photo courtesy of the department of Theatre & Film")
 "Photo: Photo courtesy of the department of Theatre & Film")
Eugene Ionesco’s “The Lesson” and “The Bald Soprano” open this Friday at the UT’s Center of Performing Arts Center Theatre.
These pieces are the most well known works from Romanian and French playwright Ionesco, who is considered a master of the theatre of the absurd.
Under the direction of Cornel Gabara, who has directed other university plays such as last semester’s “The Doctor In Spite of Himself,” “Macbeth” and “Ubu Roi,” a darkly comedic, energetic and beautifully designed modern classic again graces the stage.
Corey Globke is the costume designer for both “The Lesson” and “The Bald Soporano,” and was also the feature designer for “Machinal,” which was performed during the fall semester. Donald Fox designed the lights for these shows as he did for “Machinal” and “The Doctor In Spite of Himself.” James Hill was the scenic designer.
Dramaturg for the production Ed Lingan said, “Ionesco writes farce freed from the trappings of plot, which is interesting because farce is entirely based on plot, but he somehow manages to make farce simultaneously conventional and completely unfamiliar to us; it’s funny and scary.”
Humor and fear are the primary conventions that make plays like Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot” or Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” unique: they do not fall under the category of standard comedy or drama and lack a cohesive plot. The characters’ purposes and motivations lack meaning and logic, creating a realm of ridiculousness.
“The Lesson” questions and challenges communication and the exchange of knowledge. An eccentric professor tries to prepare the pupil for her doctorate exam. How much she actually absorbs from his lesson is the problem.
“The Bald Soprano” is Ionesco’s first play, which he wrote after trying to learn English. The play was originally titled “English With No Pain.” Ionesco illustrates how language fails people.
“[The play depicts] how dangerous a situation can become when there is no reciprocal understanding,” Gabara said.
Ionesco was born in Romania in 1909 and wrote “The Bald Soprano” in 1951 after trying to learn English a few years before.
“He learned things that he had always known but never seriously thought about; that, for instance, the floor is down and the ceiling is up...but as he diligently transcribed them into his notebook, they seemed to morph, to lose their original meaning, to expand and overflow,” said Karen Ott, dramaturg of the Ionesco Festival.
Ionesco was overwhelmed by the simplicity of language and conversation from English lessons. While observing the ultimate disconnection and confusion of the world, he used his notebook writings to form “The Bald Soprano,” which has become widely known as an absurdist classic.
“I have attempted...to exteriorize, by using as objects the anguish of my characters,” Ionesco said in an article by Karen Ott. “To make the set speak and the action on the stage more visual, to translate into concrete images of terror, regret or remorse, and estrangement, to play with words (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.”
“Theatre of the absurd places absurd characteristics of life’s situations that occur at any moment under a magnifying glass, to the extreme, and illustrates people’s incapacity to listen and communicate,” Gabara said.
Each day people see corruption, greed, ignorance, sadness and madness and it is obvious that there needs to be a change in the world, however, nothing is done.
“We persist in absurdity,” Gabara said. “Plays like this show how humans force themselves into absurd situations by the result of their own actions.”
Gabara also pointed out that many modern television shows and animated shows share thematic characteristics from theatre of the absurd.
“Absurdism works much better with comedy, hence the caricatural dimension of characters and the absurdity of the situations they are in,” Gabara said.
Shows such as “Family Guy” and “South Park” exhibit absurdist ideas in their efforts to place everyday, relevant absurd situations under that magnifying glass of criticism where we find humor in our own ignorance and disconnection. The characters, or even caricatures, in these plays breathe the same air as these animated figures in their style and substance.
“The Lesson” and “The Bald Soprano” open this Friday and run through this weekend and next at 7:30 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 2:00p.m. Tickets are $9 for students, $11 for seniors, faculty, staff and alumni and $13 for the general public. You can purchase tickets online at http://www.utoledo.edu/as/theatrefilm/index.html, during the CPA box office hours or before performances.
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