About the Author

Eugène Ionesco's first one-act "antiplay," The Bald Soprano, inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. He followed it with other one-act plays in which illogical events create an atmosphere both comic and grotesque, including The Lesson. His most popular full-length play was Rhinoceros. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1970.