La Leçon

About

A play that is regarded as a seminal work in the Theatre of the Absurd, this piece by Eugène Ionesco portrays a demented professor and maid who take pleasure in tormenting a young pupil through ridiculous, rote exercises. The pupil begins to fail both mentally and physically until she collapses while the aging professor can no longer stand what he perceives as her ignorance. The one-act play ends violently when the professor kills the pupil due to her unsuccessful attempts at an answer to the nonsensical non sequitur babble. The final scene opens with the macabre maid greeting a new, unsuspecting pupil. Ionesco created the play in 1951 and since 1957, it has played at the Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris.