Rare Terra Theatre Coupons and Deals

Description

Watch as two of playwright and dramatist Eugène Ionesco's plays, "The Lesson" and "Jack, or the Submission" come to life with the Rare Terra Theatre! The first of these two plays, "The Lesson," was first performed in 1951. Since 1957, it has been in permanent production in Paris’ Theatre de la Huchette. In "The Lesson", Ionesco wrote a comic drama in which comedy mixes with moments of oppressive domination and violence. The play takes place in the professor’s office/living/dining room. The Pupil arrives for her lesson. As the cliché-ridden lesson progresses, the professor grows more irritated and disappointed with (what he perceives) as the pupils ignorance. This dynamic between the professor and pupil becomes a battle between knowledge and ability. However, the battle turns out to be an unfair thrashing by subjective knowledge coerced by a totalitarian dictator. "Jack, or the Submission" was written in 1949. It portrays family life, perhaps from the perspective of a young man. Everything around Jack is raised to paroxysm. He is surrounded by dysfunction, ridiculed and belittled by his family. Jack rebels against his (as he sees it) self-serving parents and thick-witted world. Ionesco describes his play as a parody of family drama. This parody involves Jack’s arranged marriage to Roberta I. Roberta I, however, is not satisfactory so her parents invent Roberta II in hope she will satisfy. When Jack and Roberta are finally discarded, left on their own, they vulnerably give in, they begin to trust, dysfunction disappears and they connect. In the words of Ionesco himself, "....A play is a construction, made up of a series of situations or states of consciousnesses which intensify, become increasingly dense, then knot themselves up, either to unravel or to end in unbearable complexity." Judge the outcome of this yourself by experiencing two of Ionesco's masterpieces, live at the Second Stage!