The Bald Soprano, a play unlike anything that has been written before it. Written by a man who lived during a time where theatre was a legitimate and sacred art form. However this trend of upstanding and dare I say, classy productions were making way for more avant-garde pieces. Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is one of these pieces. Beckett was also a fan of a Romanian writer named Eugene Ionesco. He was the mastermind behind The Bald Soprano. Ionesco has been quoted as saying that The Bald Soprano is before anything else an "anti-play-. Meaning that this play is nothing remotely close to what a play should be. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to explain, using examples from the play and from my studies, just how right Eugene Ionesco was when he coined the phrase: "The Anti-Play-. .
First off, I would like to tackle the issue of structure. The structure in The Bald Soprano seems relatively direct and simple. There's a beginning, a climax and an ending. The only difference between a traditional plot structure and Ionesco is the fact that there is nothing tying the beginning of the play to the end of the play except for the fact that the end of the play IS the beginning of the play. The first line of The Bald Soprano is : "There it's nine o'clock -, the last line of the same play some forty pages later is: "There it's nine o'clock -. This excerpt clearly shows that The Bald Soprano's structure is very much an "anti-structure- written in an "anti-play-.
Thirdly, the language in the play is very unique. Not to say that it is exotic. The language used in The Bald Soprano is English. What's unique about the language is the way it's used and presented. The Bald Soprano is comprised of nothing more than silly English clichés strung together in an incomprehensible web of dialogue spoken by four individual characters that are relatively identical. Here is a small passage from the play demonstrating the unique way language is used: .
