"Les chaises" (English spelling)

In 1948, he wrote La cantatrice chauve (1950), a play on an English conversation textbook that vividly depicts the modern man's anxieties about the meaninglessness of everyday formal logic, the impossibility of communication through speech, the resulting disintegration of language, and the resulting mental breakdown. He also produced one-act plays such as La leçon (1951) and Les chaises (1952), which depict with dark humor the terror 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. After "Unpaid Assassin" (1959), he moved on to multi-act plays centered on the protagonist Bélanger, recovering the narrative quality that had been lost in his earlier works. After the success of "Rhino" (1958), his work "Thirst and Hunger" (1966) was performed at the Comédie-Française, and in 1970 he was elected a member of the Academie.

*Some of the terminology that mentions "Les chaises" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…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。《無給の殺し屋》(1959)を転機に，主人公ベランジェを中心に展開する多幕物に進み，初期作品で失われていた物語性を回復し，《犀（さい）》(1958)の成功を経て《渇きと飢え》(1966)がコメディ･フランセーズで上演され，70年にはアカデミー会員に選ばれる。…

※「《Les chaises》」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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