dramaturge notes for The Bald Soprano
Art Collier

The Bald Soprano, Ionesco's anti-play, doesn't work — that is its essential point.  The 
playwright methodically strips away the resources that usually go into the making of a 
play; he sabotages dialogue, character, logic, narrative, suspense and meaningful 
language.  The expectations of the audience, who have come to see a play are gleefully 
dashed and the actors on stage, who normally can count on these resources to help them 
put the play together must not only go on without them, but are called on to destroy them 
in front of the audience.

The play divides into three parts:
1.	up to the entrance of the Fire Chief:  tests the possibilities of dialogue – the 
Smiths have a turn, then the Martins, then both couples are on stage together
2.	while the Fire Chief is on stage:  since dialogue has failed, perhaps narrative, 
story telling, a single voice, will provide away to get the play going
3.	after the exit of the Fire Chief:  the meaningfulness of language itself is 
challenged

If dialogue, narrative and language all fail, what is left?  After so much destruction, the 
rhythm and music of the language itself asserts a positive value.  The Bobby Watson 
conversation may fail as a source of information, but there is a musical play of the 
language itself, a pleasure when you know that the next name mentioned will be Bobby 
Watson.  The persistent exclamations of wonder in the Martins' recognition scene can 
work in a similar way.  In the third part of the play, language becomes purely musical.  
Sentences, devoid of meaning, break down into phrases, then words, then letters – 
language has become pure sound.

The play is haunted by the failure of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason.  The thinkers 
of this period proposed that if you studied the world carefully enough, you could derive 
from these observations the laws that govern the universe, which, therefore, would be 
predictable and make sense.  Rene Descartes and John Locke investigated how the mind 
acquired knowledge.  Benjamin Franklin conducted scientific experiments to understand 
nature.  Sherlock Holmes, a descendant of these Enlightenment figures, used his 
heightened powers of observation to deduce solid facts from the most trivial of 
circumstances.  He could impose the clarity of his rational vision on the threatening crime 
scenes of London.  In the play, Ionesco alludes to these men of reason and defies their 
vision of the world.  The universe he gives us in The Bald Soprano is chaotic, unruly, 
illogical, provisional and radically uncertain.