Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian playwright who wrote mostly in French, and one of the foremost figures of the French Avant-garde theatre. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict the solitude and insignificance of human existence in a tangible way.Though best known as a playwright, but plays were not his first chosen medium. He started writing poetry and criticism.Ionesco began his theatre career late; he did not write his first play until 1948.He translated a play, 'La Cantatrice Chauve', which was performed for the first time in 1950 under the direction of Nicolas Bataille. It was far from a success and went unnoticed until a few established writers and critics, among them Jean Anouilh and Raymond Queneau, championed the play.Ionesco's earliest works, and his most innovative, were all one-act nonsense plays or extended sketches: 'La Cantatrice Chauve translated as 'The Bald Soprano' or 'The Bald Prima Donna' (written 1948), 'Jacques ou la soumissio'n translated as 'Jack', or 'The Submission' (1950), 'La Leçon' translated as 'The Lesson' (1950), 'Les Salutions' translated as 'Salutations' (1950), 'Les Chaises' translated as 'The Chairs' (1952), 'L'Avenir est dans les oeufs' translated as 'The Future is in Eggs' (1951), 'Victimes du Devoir' translated as' Victims of Duty' (1952) and, finally, 'Le Nouveau Locataire' translated as 'The New Tenant' (1953).With 'Tueur sans gages' translated as The Killer Ionesco began to explore more sustained dramatic situations featuring more humanized characters. Notably this includes 'Bérenger', a central character in a number of Ionesco's plays, the last of which is 'Le Piéton de l'air' translated as 'A Stroll in the Air'. Ionesco's later work has generally received less attention. This includes 'La Soif et la faim' translated as Hunger and Thirst' (1966), 'Jeux de massacre' (1971), 'Macbett' (1972, a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth) and 'Ce formidable bordel' (1973).
Ionesco also wrote his only novel, 'The Hermit', during this later period. It was first published in 1975. A part from the libretto for the opera 'Maximilien Kolbe' (music by Dominique Probst) which has been performed in five countries, filmed for television and recorded for release on CD, Ionesco did not write for the stage after 'Voyage chez les morts' in 1981. However, 'La Cantatrice chauve' is still playing at the 'Théâtre de la Huchette' today, having moved there in 1952. Ionesco also contributed to the theatre with his theoretical writings (Wellwarth, 33).In the first section, titled "Experience of the Theatre", Ionesco claimed to have hated going to the theatre as a child because it gave him "no pleasure or feeling of participation" . He wrote that the problem with realistic theatre is that it is less interesting than theatre that invokes an "imaginative truth", which he found to be much more interesting and freeing than the "narrow" truth presented by strict realism . He claimed that "drama that relies on simple effects is not necessarily drama simplified". Ionesco is often considered a writer of the Theatre of the Absurd. This is a label originally given to him by Martin Esslin in his book of the same name, placing Ionesco alongside such contemporary writers as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. In Present Past, Past Present, Ionesco wrote, "Breton taught us to destroy the walls of the real that separate us from reality, to participate in being so as to live as if it were the first day of creation, a day that would every day be the first day of new creations."
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