Dramaturg's Statement

This is a play out of Theatre of the Absurd, and the production needs to keep that in mind in the early stages of development. To treat this play as being straightforward would be a great betrayal of the intentions of the author. Eugene Ionesco's first experience with theater was at a puppet show, and he was enthralled with it, in its simplicity and grotesqueness. He looked at his plays as they should partly becoming from nightmares.

There are not a lot of outside references to people or places so the production team is a lot more free to make the show as absurd as possible. Speaking as a designer i know it can make it more fun and artistically challenging when I'm not having to keep to take in consideration how clothes or furniture looked at any given time.

I don't see any problems that need to be addressed. Reviews of other productions have not spoken of any problems with script or handling of script. The biggest problem might be havening a king who can play the wide fast range of emotion.

Resources & Links

1)title:Eugene Ionesco
brief description: Brief biography of the author for incite in to the creator of the play.

2)title:Theatre of the Absurd
brief description: A history and overview of the Theatre of the Absurd.


3)title: Video of Eugene Ionesco
brief description: Interview with author, subtitled. Good incite into him.

4)title: Punch and Judy Videos
brief description: You Tube vids of the puppet show. take a look at several of them

Educator's Packet

We welcome you to see our performance of the 1962 play by Eugene Ionesco Exit the King, a play that comes out of the heart of the Theatre of the Absurd movement. This full length play is being produced near you and we feel that this would be a great way to introduce your students to Theatre of the Absurd.
Elements of Absurdest Theatre have been around as long as theater has been around. But its start tends to be contributed to after World War II, with Absurdest authors like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Edward Albee, and many others.





Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994)is a French/Romanian writer who studied in both France and Romania, but loved his mother's home land of France. He wrote his first play when he was 37, The Bald Soprano. He used the character Berenger in many of his plays as a semi-autobiographical character. Eugene lonesco once admitted that he was a playwright of despair—otherwise, he said, "why do you think I have to be so funny?"



--an introduction to the plot and its characters

The play takes place in the throne room of Berenger the I, who is the King of an undisclosed time and Kingdom where he has ruled for the past 400 years. His meager court is as faded as the rest of the Kingdom: all that's left is the maid Juliette, who takes care of the castle by herself, the Guard, who announces the progression of the king, the Doctor, who is also the astrologist and executioner, and his two rival queens, Marguerite, his first wife and Marie, his second and younger wife.

As we are informed, the King must die by the end of the play. The play itself is simply a matter of getting there, Reminiscent of the medieval morality play Everyman, Berenger dose not accept it, but as he and his kingdom wither and melt into oblivion he slowly starts to accepts the inevitability of death that come to us all.


--a brief production history with excerpts from reviews

1)Belvoir St Theatre, Melbourne, Australia
June '07 - July '07
Direction: Neil Armfield
Staring:Geoffrey Rush
"....Rush is the brilliant centre of a sparkling ensemble: after a slightly sticky twenty minutes or so at the beginning of the play, his performance is as remarkable as any I've seen. Rush is a great clown, and this role gives him plenty of scope for physical humour, especially in a scene in which (as the Guard announces) "The King is Marching!" But his skill is evident in his restraint; he never allows grotesquerie to degenerate into mere cartooning. Like Ionesco's writing, he keeps his options open: anything is possible at any time. He plays the full range of the text, from broad comedy to brutality to sheer pathos, until he becomes the everyking we all are, alone and afraid in our shabby kingdoms, facing the dark...." Posted by Alison Croggon, March 29, 2007 on Theatre Notes Blog



--Preparatory classroom exercise (something to do and discuss) before the class attends the performance

Have your students explore Theatre of the Absurd, by reading other plays written by Absurdest authors like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Edward Albee, and then discuss how the author successfully or not makes a modern day fairy tale to make some point of man's existents. Then have them play with making their own Absurd Theatre. Are they able to work with and under stand the underlying satirical language and nature of Absurd.


Q&A with the director and production team following the performance.
1)Why did you chose to do this play?
2)How do you think this production enhances the authors intentions?
3)what would you say to someone who dose not fell like they get absurd theatre.

Reviews

Exit The King by Eugene Ionesco, review by Michael Scott Moore in SF Weekly July 8, 1998

. . . As the finale of the Exit’s Absurdist Season, it
has not just an apt name but also a vividly absurd set -- the
huge colorful throne could be an upholstered lifeguard tower,
flanked by mushroom-stools out of Alice in Wonderland. The
royal guard wears bicycle-safety gear, a red codpiece, and a
breastplate mounted with a barbecue grill. Juliet the
chambermaid clanks around the stage with towels and kitchen
utensils tied around her waist, and the king wears duck
slippers, a plastic cape, and fools’ motley on his legs. All this
threatens good things for the play, but the colors blare with
false promise. They show the king’s country as a candied place
where people in ridiculous disguises connive and flatter and lie;
and any hopes for the show, at least at first, are just as false. . . .

http://www.sffringe.org/media/king.html

. . . Review: Exit the King, Posted by Alison Croggon, March 29, 2007, Theatre Notes Blog
Berenger, the King (Geoffrey Rush) is a parodic portrayal of the ultimate patriarch. He has seen better days: his demesne once extended over 9000 million people, but now he rules over less than a thousand prematurely-aged subjects, and what is left of his kingdom keeps falling into an abyss. His court is reduced to a shabby retinue: there's the domestic help Juliette (Julie Forsythe), who also fulfils the functions of nurse, cook and general dogsbody, the Guard (David Woods) and the Doctor (Billie Brown), who is also the astrologist and executioner, and his two rival queens, Marie (Rebecca Massey) and Margeurite (Gillian Jones).

As we are informed, the King must die by the end of the play. The play itself is simply a matter of getting there, as Berenger howls against his fate, moving from denial to terror to pathos to a final, moving acceptance. Ionesco has literalised the tyranny of the ego, which at the point of death refuses to contemplate its own annihilation, and will give anything - even the destruction of the entire world - if only it can go on living. But even the King, who once, we are given to believe, could command the sun itself, has to bow before death. . . . .


http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2007/03/review-exit-king.html

Production Photos

• the Royal Court Theatre, London
  
• 10th September 1963
• produced by George Devien

• The Main Street Theatre, Vancouver, Wa,
• 1998
• directed by Ugo Baldassari

• Belvoir St Theatre, Melbourne, Australia
• 2007
• Direction: Neil Armfield
• Set and Costume Design: Dale Ferguson
• 
  

Production History

1)Belvoir St Theatre, Melbourne, Australia
13 June 2007 to 29 July 2007
Translated by Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush
Direction: Neil Armfield
Set and Costume Design: Dale Ferguson
Cast includes Billie Brown, Julie Forsyth, Gillian Jones, and Geoffrey Rush


2)Exit Theatre,San Francisco, CA
June 23 - July 28 1998
Directed by Ugo Baldassari



3)The Pearl Theatre Company, Theatre 80,
9/13/01-10/21/01; opening 9/24/01
Directed by Joseph Hardy
Cast: Robert Hock (Berenger), Carol Schultz (Queen Margguerite) Celeste Ciulla (Queen Marie), Ray Virta (Doctor). Sue Jin Song (Juliette) and Michael Nichols (Guard),
Set Design: Beowulf Boritt
Costume Design: Barara A. Bell
Lighting Design: Stephen Petrilli
Sound Design: Jon Westing

Time

My play dose not have a set time and place so I'm setting it in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the close of World War I. The war broke out as a result of the heir to the throne's assassination. they fought on three fronts against Serbia, Russia, and Italy. being torn at three different angles by the end of the war the boarders of the multi ethnic empire had been broken and split up more than eight different ways. The Russian Bolsheviks were raising up socialist issues that inspired some and terrified others .