Tuesday, December 20, 2011

On Eugene Ionesco and the New French Theatre





Ionesco and the New French Theater (Nouveau Théâtre)

In 1984, le Théatre du Triangle de Paris gave a magnificent presentation of Ionesco's Le Roi se Meurt at Teatro Amira de la Rosa in Barranquilla, Colombia, then under the direction of Alfredo Gomez-Zureck and with the attendance of the city's large French and Francophone community. Le Roi se Meurt had first been played in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Alliance Française on December 15, 1962, by Jacques Mauclair, in which the king expresses his fear of death, some sort of existentialist anguish (angoisse métaphysique).  A couple of weeks ago, after attending a double comedy presentation by Georges Feydeau through the French and Italian Department at Princeton University on the Whitman College campus, I learned that they had recently presented Le Roi se Meurt there as well.


Interestingly enough, born in Romania, lived his early age in France while his father studied law in Paris. After returning to Romania for most of his adosescence, Ionesco was then subject to an unlearning, learning, and relearning process upon his return to France. This compehensive linguistic process allows him to express his concern that he does not only writes literature but true theater, meaning that his text has a specific expression and representation in each scene context. Therefore, his characters are vivid and remarkably well delineated. Ionesco was always criticized one way or the other but never ignored by the literary critic of his time until his final success.

Unlike Racine, Moliere or Corneille, Ionesco owns a prohibited way to impress his audience and touch the sensitivity not only by words but also by the expression vividly deter,ined through his scenes, context, and content. This was especially part of the Nouveau Théâtre started around 1953-1954.


Ionesco reflects his inspiring own fear of death in the Roi se Meurt


Ionesco had looked at Camus and Sartre for inspiration, yet he imposes his creativity beyond La Peste and La Nausée, conceptually an existentialist view of a rotten apple society, perhaps, with a surreal taste. Other explicit images of Ionesco's theater involve politics and violence. An analytic study of his works suggests that intrigue among characters is both a key trigger and driver among those well-defined characters.

Other important works by Ionesco include La cantatrice Chauve, L'Impromptu de l'Alma, Jack ou la Soumission, La Soif et La Faim, La Leçon, La Nièce Épouse, and Victimes du Devoir.

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