La cantatrice chauve (English spelling)

Japanese: 《La cantatrice chauve》（英語表記）Lacantatricechauve

…Born in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father and a French mother, he grew up in France until he was 13 years old, studied at the University of Bucharest, and returned to Paris in 1938. In 1948, he wrote La cantatrice chauve (1950), a play based on an English conversation textbook, vividly depicting the modern man's anxiety about the meaninglessness of everyday formal logic, the impossibility of communication through conversation, the resulting disintegration of language, and the resulting mental breakdown. He gave it the subtitle "Anti-play". He also produced one-act plays such as La leçon (1951) and Les chaises (1952), which depict with dark humor the fear that words and objects will take on a life of their own and overwhelm humans. Since the mid-1950s, he has received international acclaim as one of the leading figures in the so-called absurdist theatre. …

From [Avant-Garde Theatre]

...The concept of "absurdity" has already been recognized in the works of existentialists such as A. Camus, but the distinctive feature of absurdist theatre is that it completely rejects the conventional dramaturgy based on logical thinking as a method of expression. E. Ionesco's debut work, "La cantatrice chauve" (1950), was also titled "Anti-play," and it thoroughly mocked conventional dramaturgy. In this play, which begins with a conversation between an English couple in an English middle-class home, language breaks away from the meaning of everyday life and becomes nuclear fissionable, even destroying the identity of the person speaking it. ...

*Some of the terminology that mentions "La cantatrice chauve" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

Japanese:

…ルーマニア人を父，フランス人を母として，ルーマニアのスラチナで生まれ，13歳までフランスで育ち，ブカレスト大学に学んだ後，1938年にパリに戻る。48年に英会話の教科書をもじって，日常的な形式論理の無意味さや会話による意思疎通の不可能，それに伴う言語の解体，その帰結としての精神の崩壊という現代人の不安を如実に舞台化した《禿の女歌手La cantatrice chauve》(1950)を書き，〈反戯曲〉と副題をつける。さらに，言葉や事物がひとり歩きや自己増殖を始めて人間を圧倒する恐怖を黒いユーモアのうちに描く一幕物《授業La leçon》(1951)や《椅子Les chaises》(1952)などを発表し，50年代半ば以降いわゆる不条理劇の代表のひとりとして国際的評価を受ける。…

【前衛劇】より

…〈不条理〉という概念は，すでにA.カミュなどに代表される実存主義の作品に認められるが，表現方法として従来の論理的思考に基づく劇作法を完全に否定したところが，不条理劇の特徴である。E.イヨネスコの処女作とされる《禿（はげ）の女歌手La cantatrice chauve》(1950)が，〈反戯曲(アンチ･ピエス)〉とも題されていたように，それは従来の劇作法を徹底的に愚弄するものであった。イギリス風の中流家庭でのイギリス風の夫婦の会話に始まるこの劇では，言語は日常性の意味を離れて核分裂し，それを語る人間のアイデンティティさえも崩壊させてしまう。…

※「《La cantatrice chauve》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

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