Eugène Ionesco, La Cantatrice chauve [The Bald Prima Donna]

Edward Forman (University of Bristol)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication May 1950

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Farce
Play

Resources

Eugène Ionesco’s one-act prose farce, described by him as an “anti-pièce” [antiplay] (Ionesco, 1991, 7), was the first and defining example of the Theatre of the Absurd when it was performed at the Théâtre des Noctambules in Paris in 1950. (Samuel Beckett’s En Attendant Godot [Waiting for Godot] had been written in 1947-8 but was not performed until 1953.) The first performances of La Cantatrice chauve, directed by Nicolas Bataille (1926-2008), were badly publicized and unsuccessful, but some significant literary figures, including Jacques Audiberti, Albert Camus and Armand Salacrou, defended the originality and spontaneous creativity of the work, and a reprise of the same production launched at the Thé�…

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1768 words

Citation: Forman, Edward. "La Cantatrice chauve". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 October 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33103, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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