Théâtre et métathéâtre (Ionesco et Pirandello)
Théâtre et métathéâtre (Ionesco et Pirandello)

Summary/Abstract: 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.

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