Celebrating the 113th birth anniversary of Eugène Ionesco

A leading dramatist of the Theatre of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco’s classic plays include The Bald Soprano (1950), The Chairs (1951), Amedee or How To Get Rid of It (1954), and The Rhinoceros (1959). The Romanian-French playwright (1909-1994), like his contemporaries Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet, channelled European post-World War 2 survivor’s malaise into startling theatre pieces that explored life’s essential meaninglessness. While the Absurdists did capture the zeitgeist of the period, their plays still appeal to readers and theatre-goers everywhere, perhaps because they speak of the universal human condition. At right is Eugène Ionesco, photographed circa 1980.