Ideas - How absurdist theatre is an act of resistance

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Theatre of the Absurd was born in the postwar era as a recoil against the violent fetish that totalitarian regimes had for “order.” For 75 years, absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco's plays have been running continuously in Paris. IDEAS travels to Paris, where a logic professor can conclude confidently that a dog is in fact a cat. 

This program is brought to you in part by Specsavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan.

Book at Spexavers.cavers.caps are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. Two characters sitting side by side. Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Mr. Smith is reading the newspaper. Why do newspapers always give the age of the deceased and not? never those of the newly born. It doesn't make any sense.

Not making sense is exactly the point. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. And welcome to the absurd world of French playwright, Eugene Ionesco. Mr. Smith, hey, it says that Bobby Watson has died. Mrs. Smith, my God, the poor soul, when did he die? Why are you pretending to be shocked? You know very well that he's been dead for two years. Remember, we were at his funeral a year and a half ago. Ionesco's name is now synonymous with Theodore, a term Ionesco himself always rejected. But it stuck, as have his place.

Mrs. Smith, Shane, he was so well-preserved. Mr. Smith, the most handsome corpse in Great Britain. He didn't look at it. his age. This is Eugene Ionesco himself, reading his first and best-known play, The Bald Soprano. It's been performed all over the world in countless languages, and this year it turned 75 years old. It all started here in Paris of the 1950s, in the Latin quarter, and in Saint-Germain-de-Prette, where heavyweight writers and thinkers, like Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Samuel Beckett hung out.

And do you speak English first a little bit? A little bit, I mean. Contributor Danny Braun takes us inside the cultural hot house of post-war Paris that shaped Yonesco's imagination. 75 years later, so many ghosts from the past are still lingering in the Latin quarter. Eugene Yonesco is one of the many ghosts and maybe the one who's most alive now. The cantatrice Chauve, or the ball soprano, has been performed continuously since 1957 at the Teatro de la Uchette, over 20,000 times, all in its original staging.

Only the actors have changed. It was first produced in 1952, in a different theater, and was a capital C catastrophe. Critics trashed it, calling it a complacent farce with no substance, that it tried to break new ground by destroying language, but ended up just making noise. Yinesco began in 1952 with the bald soprano in the lesson. Then in 1955, he created Jack, or the submission. That's Gonzag Fili.

the friendly face and veteran smoker who manages the theater of La Uchette. The tier where Yonesco's plays have been running since the 1950s. Did he write Victim of Duty? Yes. And he also wrote seven short stories. Starting in the 1950s, and especially in 1957, he had a show here almost every season. He was present almost at each season with

the spectacle. Gonzag Filippe is also the author of The Fabuleu Romance Theatre de la Uchette, which tells the story of this small but creative theory space, Eugene Yonesco's second home.

The set of the ball soprano is an English middle class interior with English armchairs. An English evening with Mr. Smith, who's English, in his English armchair, wearing English slippers, smoking his English pipe, and reading an English newspaper. Next to him, in another English armchair, the English Mrs. Smith is darning English socks.

There's a long English silence. Then the English clock strikes 17 English times. It's called the bald soprano, but there's no soprano in the play. Actually, the title came from a slip of the tongue. Marie-Claude Dubert is an expert on modern theatre and has edited the complete works of Eugene Yonesco for the prestigious publisher, Editions Gallimard. The actor playing the fireman slipped up,

and instead of speaking about an institutrice blonde, he said, cantatrice show. Heinezko had been searching for a title. He thought of Big Ben Madness, but he didn't like either. And he didn't want his play to be mistaken for a satire of England's petty bourgeoisie. The message was meant to be universal. So he seized on the slip-up to show how language itself is one big slip of the tongue. Mrs. Smith, how sad for her to be widowed so young, Mr. Smith.

Luckily, they didn't have children. That was all they needed. Children. Poor woman, how could she have managed? If she's still young, she might well remarry. Morning suits her so well. But who'll take care of the children? You know they have a boy and a girl.

What are their names? Bobby and Bobby, like their parents. Uncle Bobby Watson, the old Bobby Watson, is rich and fond of the boy. He could pay for Bobby's education. That makes sense. And Bobby Watson's aunt, old Bobby. Watson could very well pay for Bobby Watson's education. That way, Bobby Watson's mother, Bobby, could remarry.

Has she anyone in mind? Yes, a cousin of Bobby Watson's. Who? Bobby Watson? Which Bobby Watson do you mean? First he revolutionized the Western theater scene, from the age of Eastcalis through Ionesco, Beckett, and the 19th. 50s, theater had barely changed. In post-war Paris,

Boulevard Theater was all the rage, and Boulevard Theater is the antithesis of any kind of social or metaphysical reflection, its pure entertainment. ...of an reflection social or metaphysic. It's uniquely a theater of divertism. And the authors, like Beckett, Yonesco, Authors like Ionesco, Adamov, Dubiard, they're fundamentally opposed to this kind of light entertainment

that fails to deliver anything for the audience to think about. So with his very first play, the bald soprano, he calls everything into question. The bald soprano is something of a manifesto, a manifesto for a new. new kind of theater, which aims to make the audience think, especially about how language fails in its purpose to communicate. This is the Gaumont-British news, presenting the truth to the free peoples of the world. Yonesco's plays Tom Dernaud's To the Established Order. A Cri Ducour, about an era which experienced the worst atrocities of war.

His grotesque cartoonish characters who are unable to communicate are his reaction to a chaotic, violent and indifferent world. To those seeking to make sense of the world, Yonesco holds up a mirror to reality. A crack mirror to reflect how reality itself is fractured. The ticket The ticket agent, who doubles as a receptionist, handles the steady stream of telephone reservations coming in. So we're in the theater's lobby.

One really important thing here is the blackboard listing the names of this week's cast. Lardoise, where are inscribed all the comedians. Tonight will be the 20,129th

performance of the bald soprano and the lesson. Each week it's changed. So, today we will play

the 20129th representation of the cantatrice and the Lasson. As you enter through the theater's only door,

what's most surprising, it's how small it is. Its 90 seats mean everyone is close to the stage and the actors re-hearsing. On stage, the Martians, who are the other couple and the Bald Soprano, are rehearsing their lines.

So now we're going to attend a run-through of the Bald Soprano. We do these every Tuesday at 4 p.m. DGA Bayee is in charge and they're done to make sure the staging doesn't change. Over the years, actors make boo-boos and change things a bit, so every week we do a run-through to make sure the staging and acting stay the same. Each week, we try to put all right for that doesn't move not, with the music-in-sense, that the game of the actors don't move not.

Yeah, yeah, you see, we're laughing. That proves it works. My name is Didier Bayey, I'm My name is Didier Bailey, I've been acting in the Bald Soprano for 38 years or something like that. So, I've seen, I've counted all my performances and I'll soon have done 2400. At about 2,000, about 2,400th. It's always the problem I live in Bromfield,

dear madam. Oh, like it's curious. From my arrival to London, I'm also in Bronfield, dear Mr.

It's always the problem of the spectac that have such long runs. It's not really doable to rehearse a show so many times. Bad habits set in.

Sometimes, On set, actors follow an instinct they think will work. If they're misguided and there's no run-through, we wind up changing direction. That's why continuity is important. That's why continuity is important. So, that's why we're doing the racco. How it's curious, it's well possible, dear monsieur.

So I'd say, you're going to do in two regists completely different. You know, you're a tro-psychologic. Didier Beilly tells the actress, playing Mrs. Martin, that her performance is too psychological, that the scene is dramatic

in substance, but not in form. He says that she should stay a bit removed from the situation. But I'm me also I'm in my chamber. You know, it's like, I'm, you know, the character isn't

crying, she's astonished. She doesn't understand what's happening to her. But she has fear? She doesn't understand. But what's what

what's what? With Yonesco, we're not dealing with psychology, says Didier Bayi. What's wonderful at Yonesco, is that there's always a fond of verity very profound. What's wonderful about YonESCO is that there's always a deep underlying truth. Remember, this is a play written in the post-war years. It presents people from a small, bourgeois society into whose midst a fireman arrives,

a figure of authority, asking if there's a fire in the house. I mean, it's about denunciation. The question could just as well be, are you hiding any Jews? Today, you might ask, are you hiding any drugs? These metaphors or these things cached. Authors always use poetry, metaphors or hidden meanings. It's not absurdity for the sake of absurdity. For the absurd, we're, we know, we're seeing a fond.

I have a souvenir, of an representation with a lycée of jazz, I remember a full house with a girl's school and no one laughed at all during the entire show. Afterwards, we held a short Q&A. We told them we were a bit taken aback because nothing made them laugh. They probably studied the text at school beforehand. And they replied, oh, but these people who have nothing to say to each other, It's horrible. It reminds us of parents, we know, old married couples. It's terrible. It's

dramatic. Fundamentally, they were right. What happens between these people is dramatic. The scene with the Martins, where they're in the same room, sleep in the same bed, have a daughter together, and they spent two minutes in the living room looking at each other and not recognizing each other. And then they try to figure out who they are for each other. And when they recognize each other again, it's still not entirely clear that they are each other. So there's this abyss in the communication between people, between couples. The smiths, on the other hand, are bored.

The smallest issue, like whether there's someone at the door when the bell rings, suddenly becomes the most important topic of conversation, and they'll argue and fight over these trivial things. It's so unodun. Oh, the doorbell. There must be someone there. I'll go see. She goes, opens the door and returns. No one. She sits down.

Mr. Martin. Mrs. Martin. You said you were going to give us another example, Mr. Martin. Oh, yes. In the next scene, the Smiths and the Martins exchange small talk, full of platitudes and meaningless phrases. And they are constantly interrupted by the doorbell. Tensions rise between Mr. and Mrs. Smith

because every time she goes to open the door, there's no one there. What? When the doorbell rings, it means someone's there, Mrs. Martin. Not always. Look what just happened. A disagreement breaks out among all four about how every time the doorbell rings no one's ever there or sometimes someone is there.

Mrs. Martin, your wife is right, Mr. Martin. Oh, you women, you always stand up for each other. Mrs. Smith. Well, I'll go see. You can't say I'm stubborn, but you'll see there's no one there. She goes, opens the door, and closes it. You see, no one's there. Mrs. Smith, oh, these men who always want to be right when they're always wrong.

Mr. Smith, oh, the doorbell, someone must be there. Mrs. Smith, don't ask me to open the door again. You've seen that it's useless. Experience shows that when the doorbell rings, there's never anyone there. Mrs. Martin. Never, Mr. Martin. That's not entirely true. Mr. Smith, it's actually false.

Most of the time when you hear the door, Dobell Ring, there is someone there. Mrs. Smith, he won't admit he's wrong, Mrs. Martin. My husband is very stubborn, too. Mr. Smith, someone is there. Mr. Martin, that's not impossible. I go.

And speaking of the bald soprano, a passage by my father, if you'll allow, it's a bit long, but it's about the soprano. Marie France Gianneseco is the playwright's daughter. In the family apartment, surrounded by prints and drawings, she searches for a quotation from her father about writing the ball soprano.

So what my father wanted to create was a comedy about comedy. And it was subtitled, The Tragedy of Language. While her fingers are scanning the text, I look around a museum-like living room where every object bears witness to the life of the Yinesco family. A portrait of the artists in pastels, religious icons, a childlike painting, everything here speaks of the author

who passed away in the next room in 1994. So everyone knows how the Assamil method helped create the Bald Soprano. My father was trying to learn English by reading the lines of Mr. Martin and Mr. Smith, the lines he found in the Assamil Method. Here's what my father says about writing the Balt Soprano. Quote, I copied sentences from my textbook to learn them by heart. So the bald soprano was initially just a lesson in plagiarism. But then something strange happened, I don't know.

The simple, clear sentences I'd copied into my notebook gradually changed, and their meaning got corrupted and distorted. The conversations no longer connected. None of the essential ideas the characters exchanged made any sense anymore. Language itself became disjointed, characters fell apart. Even the absurd was lost, and everything ended up in a senseless fight. Because my so-called heroes were shouting, not lines, not even fragments of sentences or words,

but syllables, consonants, and vowels at each other. When writing the play, which had become sort of an anti-play, like a parody of a play, a comedy about comedy, I was overcome by a very real malaise, by dizziness, nausea. Occasionally, I had to stop, and I wondered what the devil was forcing. me to keep writing, and I'd lie down on the sofa, fearing the whole project would fall into oblivion and drag me along with it.

Once done, I was actually very proud of it. I thought I'd written a kind of tragedy about language. When it was performed, I was almost surprised to hear the audience laughing, taking it in lightly, as they still do, taking it to be a comedy. A hoax even. If you were not fooled, though, and sense the malaise, the text of the Bald Soprano or textbooks for learning English or Russian or Portuguese, full of set phrases and the most tired cliches showed me how language and people's behavior can be automatic,

how people talk just to talk or talk because there's nothing to say. Because our inner world is empty, the absence of any inner life, the mechanics of everyday living. People no longer distinguish themselves from their social environment. The smiths and the Martins no longer know how to speak because they no longer know how to think, because they don't know how to feel, they have no passion and don't know how to be.

They can be anything, anything since they're not themselves, they're only others. It's an impersonal world in which they're interchangeable. Martin can be Smith and vice versa without anyone noticing. A tragic character doesn't change. He breaks down.

He is himself. He is real. Comic characters are people who do not exist. He doesn't exist. You're listening to a documentary about Eugene Ionesco and his revolutionary plays, the bald soprano and, as you'll hear in just a moment, the lesson. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad.

This program is brought to you in part by Speck Savers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Spec Savers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at spec savers today from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.caver's.cai.coms are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.ca to learn

more. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out As It Happens. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Neil Kokesal. Every day we reach people at the center of the most extraordinary stories, like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight with a tooth. Or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with As It Happens, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Montreal contributor Danny Braun takes us inside the Paris that formed Ionesco's theater of the absurd. A term Ionesco himself always disavowed. But his plays are absurd.

An entire family named Bobby Watson, a lesson in logic whose conclusion is that a dog is actually a cat. The absurdity isn't merely funny. It's deeply political. Eanesco's theatrical imagination was ignited after the rise of authoritarian regimes and the ensuing carnage of World War II. In a world where the received world order was turned upside down, a dog can become a cat. Nonsense makes sense.

As it does in our own time of proto-fascist regimes, fake news and an ever-expanding universe. of conspiracy theories. Little wonder that his plays are still running 75 years after they were first produced. They're still current. We're back at the Teatro de la Uchette, where Yonesco's plays, the ball soprano, and the lesson

have been running since 1957, a record that rivals that of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrape. We are now entering backstage into UNESCO's world. The earer manager, Gonzag Filippe. Now we're in the actor's dressing room. This part is for the women. The maid, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Martin, and the student.

There are the men. You have all the costumes of each comedian. They have all of their own. Over there is for the men. You can see the actors. costumes and the small boxes labeled with their names for their shoes. I remember a few years ago an Italian journalist asked, are those the actor's ashes?

The journalist has asked, just their shoes and a few small accessories with shirts on one side, the dresses, the costumes. And it's beautiful. It's all stone and arched. It's a building that dates back to the 15th century. Apparently it is two basements. Apparently it is two basements. The one beneath the first is set to hide a treasure. But one of our stage managers, while doing some work, found a hand.

found a hand. He was so scared that he didn't want to dig any deeper. So here's the space for props are stored, some of the costumes for the bald soprano and the lesson. These are the old chairs from the lesson. My name is Mary in the real life and Elalus. I don't speak fluently. Marie Cuvillier plays the role of the maid in the lesson, which features three characters. The professor, the student and Marie the maid.

It's a dark, disturbing play that deals with the abuse of power and ends in madness. The staging of the lesson of the lesson was done by my father, Marcel Cuevelier. So my father played the role of the professor and staged the play before I was born. It was 1951, so quite a while ago. And I saw the play when I was pretty grown up. I think my parents felt it was quite impressive. I must have been nine or ten years old.

But, how to put it, it was a bit stressful. To see your father playing the role of a murderer, even though there were funny bits like the math lesson, which was quite comic, but it was stressful. I think what's great about the lesson is that as the audience gets involved, they're really amused. During the math lesson, they're laughing. And gradually, as the story develops, the laughter dies down and silence takes over.

You can feel the tension, the anxiety. And Marie, the maid in the lesson, she's kind of pathetic. And Marie, the maid in the lesson, she's kind of pathetic. Every time she shows up, but without ever saying so explicitly, she signals the upcoming death. She tries to stop the professor from going that far. But she won't succeed. The professor and the maid are a diabolical couple. They're a terrible couple.

It's a couple afreous. Good morning, miss. You are, I guess that you are the new student? Yes, sir. Good morning, sir. As you can see, I'm on time. The lesson is about a student. who wants to complete a doctorate. The professor is shy and friendly at first, then gradually turns into a murderous monster who rapes and kills the student.

It's a tale where instinct overcomes culture. The play itself is a lesson about inhumanity, a lesson we've obviously not learned yet. The lesson, I really love this play, because there's a fear of death, extreme desire. In all of UNESCO's work, there's always a disconnect between words and meaning, a kind of push-pull, and always somebody striving madly to communicate. Frank Desmet is an actor and the director of the Theatre de Chet. he explains that the key to the lesson

is its interplay of comedy and tragedy The lesson is perhaps the play that charms me charm me, impression The lesson is perhaps the play that charms me, impresses me and still challenges me the most. I think it was UNESCO who said he never really understood the difference between tragedy and comedy. That sentence still haunts me.

I don't know if it should be attributed to him, but it still haunts me. What is comedy? What is tragedy? Because the devices are the same. The lesson is deeply tragic, and yet people laugh every night. To hear words that suddenly tip us into tragedy every night at the same time, at the same moment. Words that cast a chill over the audience because we'd engaged with something much more anecdotal at first, a student who can't subtract but only add.

And then suddenly we're thrust into the realm of tragedy into serial murder. Yeah, it's quite extraordinary. Yes, it's a particular. How many are four minus three? Four minus three? Yes, what I mean is subtract three from four. That'd be seven?

I'm sorry to contradict you, but four minus three does not make seven. You're confused. Four plus three makes seven. It's no longer about adding up. Now, you must subtract. Oh, yes, yes. The lesson is a tragedy, because it ends with a rape and a murder. The professor gets upset when the student fails to understand,

and he gets angrier and angrier and language itself spirals out of control. But mostly, what he wants to relay is that knowledge can lead to finesse. fanaticism. Every language, and you must know this young lady, and remember it till the day you die. In this excerpt, the professor hints at the student's tragic end by asking her to remember a fundamental principle until the day she dies. Well, monsieur, yes, monsieur. The plot is very simple. The professor takes on a student to teach her a way. arithmetic, philology, et cetera, and at the end of the play, he's so annoyed by her

inability to get it and by her complete confusion that he rapes and kills her, so it's a very dark play. And what's surprising is that once her body has been moved off stage, another student arrives and another lesson begins in exactly the same way. In the lesson, Yinesco puts individual perversion on display, but what he wants to convey with the Nazi armband that the professor puts on is that those who are perverted as individuals become

perverted as a group politically. These same instincts are triggered by social and political events, wars. It's these same people who become sadists in political life, these same people who become executioners. Sounds

must be seized in flight by their wings so that they'll not fall on deaf ears. As a result, when you set out to articulate, it's recommended as much as possible to stretch your neck and chin high and rise up on the tips of your toes like this. You see? Yes, sir.

Be quiet. Stay seated and don't interrupt and project the sounds as loud as you can with the full force of your lungs and vocal cords. The lesson was written in 1951 and was Yonesco's first political play. Yonesco himself had witnessed the rise of fascism in his native Romania with the Iron Guard. His father had joined the ultra-nationalist movement, which was modeled on Germany under Hitler. So Yonesco felt twice betrayed.

His father had become a fascist, and his father had become a fascist. and his country had succumbed to Nazism. He was deeply wounded by these events, wounds that will later reopen with the rise of authoritarian communist regimes. He left Romania never to return. And I think that it's really the piece that would be re-jewed

everywhere. Marie-Clo Dubert says rhinoceros is really the play that should be performed everywhere. It was with rhinoceros, written in 1957, that Yonesco tackled the ideological movements that spread like

the plague across Europe. In Rhinoceros, Yonisco criticizes the danger of fanaticism through the character of Berengé, who stands alone resisting the mass hysteria. So an epidemic that's declared in a little village of province, bien-tranquil.

So an epidemic is declared in a small, quiet provincial town where suddenly a rhinoceros stampede through and crushes everything. All sorts of theories arise as to what happened, maybe. he escaped from a zoo, but the rhinos keep coming and destroy everything in their path. And little by little, all the townspeople turn into rhinos, all but one.

The protagonist, Berengé, who's obviously YonESCO's mouthpiece, does not transform. But he's terrified because the rhinos surround his apartment and bang their tusks against the walls, which are about to collapse. We're now at the very end of the play. He begins a monologue. It's a completely pathetic monologue because he knows he's the last human. And he's terrified.

With no one around him, he feels he's losing his identity. He no longer knows who he is. And then, despite everything, he pulls himself together and says, I will resist, I will not surrender. So it's a kind of him to courage. Resistance in the face of a mob.

...resisting face of a mob. that went through the crowd when Hitler passed by was electric. A kind of contagion, and that's why the play is about an epidemic. Because identifying with a leader like this spreads quickly, you have to do what everyone else is doing. And the more people who join in, the more it's snowball. It's basically like a big family. You're not alone, and it's impossible to be yourself.

We live in order, and of course. We live in history, which can be crushing, but there are also moments of rest by it, and of course it repeats itself, because history is the product. of our desires, our discontent, our hunger, our thirst, and our desire for power, which are all part of being human. He is constant in the human. No! No!

No! Yonisco himself resisted all the fanatical rhinos he encountered during his life. Nazism, fascism, fascism, Stalinism, Marxism, and all other extreme isms, including intellectualism. Marie-France Yonesco When he was all young, he was a movement in Romania, when there was a right-wing movement called the Iron Guard that he hated. And among them were friends of his young writers who joined the movement. He detested them.

And then in France, thank God my parents arrived in France in 1940. In France in the early 1950s, even late 1940s, Marxism became another form of rhinoceritis. Sartre, to my father, Jean-Paul Sartre, was the prototypical rhinoceros who couldn't see, who didn't want to see. Mostly he was annoyed and angered by it, the refusal to see what was happening. Of course, in 1989 and 1990, they saw, that was easy. There's something irrational about intellectuals,

about the intelligentsia. It's passion, really. They're unaware of it. they're addicted to irrational beliefs and they justify their irrational choices with rational arguments which ultimately results in aberration. Any movement claiming to be a benevolent ideology

that poisons and destroys our ability to judge and to see reality Trumpism now, for example. Trump, my father would have been horrified. Trump even has the physique of a rhinoceros. America is back. They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats.

They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame. Make America great again. Today, for example, it's so easy to get people to follow a trend. And one of the things, about in rhinoceros about the character Berengé, how he's left alone

at the end of the play reminds me a lot of how people feel today if they are left out of a trend. You know, it's a very lonely feeling not to be following the crowd. USA! USA! USA!

Anne Quilly is a professor of French at the University of Mississippi and author of an essay about the excesses of identity politics and Yonesco's fight against rhinocerosis. America's just not going to be great. America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is going to be amazing.

I would say that, like today's society, definitely you see people just hungry to follow a trend, to belong to something greater, to, and unfortunately, it's kind of veering into fanaticism because, and Eanesco was always very cautious about following trends to the point of extremity. Like he really was mistrustful of both the extreme right as well as the extreme left. He thought, now these are people who are just like following blindly. And there was just, you know, this sense that like we're going to belong to something and we're going to do this

together. We're going to just repeat the same slogans, repeat the same memes, nothing complicated, just, you know, make America great again. There you go. Just something very easy to remember that can be chanted, that seems to have meaning, just four words, you know. People just kind of jumped on this bandwagon like, okay, we're going to follow us the strong leader. In the age of social media, where viral information real or fake spreads instantly, and where trends and influencers promote prefab thinking, it's never been easier to manipulate millions of people directly. From American election campaigns to the war in Ukraine,

the Internet has become a toxic environment where misinformation drives, especially now that big tech has cozened up to power, shaping the new language of propaganda. A scholar of modern theater and the works of Yonesco, Marie-Claude Dubert. As an individual, what is quite extraordinary in him, As an individual, what's quite extraordinary about him, despite his despair at the state of the world,

is that he'd certainly be completely dismayed today by the invasion of Ukraine, by Trump's rise to power. He was a very warm person, very open to others, because his despair stemmed from his feeling that people weren't human. There was always aggression everywhere, whether at an individual, political, or state level, and that's something that made him truly very human. He was warm and very attentive to others. He was very attentive to others.

In the theater, there is a tradition to strike nine quick beats, followed by three slow ones to mark the start of a performance. Gonzag-Philippe performs this ritual. The mythical object is called the Brigadier, and it's used to open every show by striking nine times. We're quite proud of our Brigadier because when they renovated the theater in 1948, There were Turkish toilets. And the actresses who were helping with the work, while the toilets were blocked. So the director, George Vitale, dredged up the courage to put his hand down the toilet, and he found a magnificent carved deerhead.

He said, this will be our brigadier. He fixed the head to the top of a wooden stick. And ever since 1948, this brigadier has been striking nine times. opening the bald soprano and the lesson. This twist of fate must have appealed to Yonesco. Irony, imagination and dreams were the raw materials of all his work, both in his writing and his painting. The imaginer, in the eyes of Yonesco is more

The imaginary world is more important than the reality. And, by suite, all his theater... The imaginary world is more important to Ionesco than reality is, so all of his plays have a certain dream-like quality. We're never in a replica of reality. Nothing was more unbearable to him than realism. Bano and anecdotic,

so in the measure where his theater is universal... Because realism simply... He simply relays the banal and the anecdotal, whereas his plays are meant to be universal, and dreams offer this kind of universality. A stroll in the air, which features a character who can fly, came from a dream about flying, because he often had dreams about flight, which are about wanting to escape reality, because reality is heavy. So dreams are often the inspiration, and in that respect he's quite similar to the surrealists.

Here's one called The Race to Wear, because we're all running towards, I don't know what. Inside this apartment that tells the story of Yonesco's life, Marie-France remembers her father as if he was still living there. I was an only child, and I must say, he was an extremely attentive father, affectionate, anxious. He gave me everything. He influenced my tastes, for example, and guided my reading. I admired him a lot.

It wasn't always easy, of course, when emotions are involved and things get sensitive, tricky, but I owe him, not only my life, but also who I am deep down, the questions I ask myself, the answers I find are the ones I don't. I owe him enormous. A muted sorrow

surrounds her today. As she begins cataloging the items she hopes will be his legacy to future generations. Here you want to see you want to see I'll see I'll show you look a lot will go to the National Library I've already given some to Bobour the Pompidou Center actually these really beautiful paintings were offered to my father by Juan Miro the Catalan artist he'd made a portrait of my father who'd written a profile of him

for the magazine Paris Match. A portrait of my mother, too, and a little rhinoceros made by Max Ernst, but all of that is already at the Pompidou Center. Oh, no, the other painting by my father's at the Pompidou right now, the real Matamax. And little figures like this, you see, there's a certain naivete. He felt he had said in his essential of what he had to say in theater.

He continued to keep a diary and wrote occasional articles for the press, but nothing more for the theater. He was very creative, so he painted. He'd never learned to paint. His drawings were actually quite clumsy. He was a real amateur. I still think he expressed himself more in words than in painting, but what he loved about painting, I think,

was that it pushed him to explore what he didn't know and his own awkwardness. He was such an authentic person that he could only paint what mattered to him, what moved him and challenged him. He knew how to do this with words and then learned how to do it with painting and color. I'll give you a couple of.

I'll give you a quotation of his, where he describes himself quite well. It's in his last journal called the Intermittent Quest. Here's what he says. I am the man who tries to understand the infinite. The man who would read. really like to have infinity explained, the man who faces infinity squarely, who tackles infinity head-on, unarmed, to imagine the unimaginable, to exhaust the inexhaustible, to conceive the inconceivable. Episely, the inepuisable,

conceivar, the inconceivable. You were listening to a documentary by Montreal contributor Danny Braun about the enduring appeal and relevance of Eugene Ionesco. Special thanks to Mary France, Ianesco, Mary Claude Uber, Anne Quiney, and the team at Diabelle.

who welcomed us warmly and let us go behind the scenes of Ionesco's work and world. Translations by Michelle Gagnon. Readings by Donna Dingwall, Lisa Godfrey, Tom Howell, Greg Kelly, Matthew Laysen Rider, and Chris Wadskow. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer of ideas. Technical production, Emily Kiervezio and Sam McNulty. Nikola Lukshic is the senior producer. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyed. The stage is momentarily empty.

The bell on the left door rings. Just a minute, coming. She appears as she did at the beginning, moves towards the door as the bell rings again. She's in a real hurry, this one. on. She reaches the door and opens it. Good morning, miss. Are you the new student? You've come for your lesson? The professor is expecting you. I'll tell him you've arrived. He'll be right down. Come in, miss. Come in. Come in. Entry, mademoiselle. Ridou,

fin of the lesson. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.