Théâtre et métathéâtre (Ionesco et Pirandello)

Résumé

This study aims to highlight an important issue concerning the onset of Ionesco’s career as a
playwright, more precisely his theoretical views on the subject of theatre and also his metatheatrical
preoccupations that can be observed in the analysis of English Without Teacher (Englezeşte fără professor), the
Romanian variant of The Bald Soprano. Ionesco’s early theatrical attempts are explicit metatheatrical
constructions, very similar to those built by L. Pirandello in Six Characters in Search of an Author. For the
history of the early 20th century’s theatre, Pirandello’s radical metatheatrical message represents an act of
theatrical pedagogy that can be analyzed on three related dimensions: an analysis of complex theatrical
machinery, a denial of the then popular Boulevard Theatre, and an act of criticism against the cultural and
aesthetical practices of the epoch. In effect, Pirandello’s metatheatrical experiments represent explicit and
promising manifestations for the renewal of the European theatre; and here one should also notice the implicit
criticism against the ideological structures that were populating the cultural imaginary of the time. Ionesco’s
early play follows the aesthetical and cultural principles generated by Pirandello’s iconoclast views. The play
English Without Teacher is built as an act of dispute with the theatrical space and with the spectator’s cultural
expectations, and finally it becomes an attempt to critically reevaluate the theatre and its potential. In short, this
is an act of theatrical self-pedagogy that will later lay the foundations for the theatrical experiments that were to
come.