Hamidreza Moradi on the show The Bald Soprano

La Cantatrice chauve – translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna – is the first play written by Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco.

The Second World War had a great impact on all aspects of human, artistic and cultural life, to the extent that under the influence of this event, playwrights such Eugène Ionesco and Beckett wrote works in which humans no longer have the ability to communicate with each other.

  And language, as an important element of communication between humans, is no longer in a powerful position and is declining. These themes and new look became known as the theater of the absurd and artists addressed it in different ways.

Hamidreza Moradi is also one of the young artists who adapted this play for his first directing experience.

Wasn't it difficult to choose the play " The Bald Soprano " for the first directorial experience?

- Certainly . The show "" The Bald Soprano " may seem very simple at first glance. Actually, acting and directing is very difficult. In this show, everything seems irrelevant and usually the characters make the audience laugh. But basically everything is quite serious. This seriousness combined with simplicity and ridiculousness and makes the work more difficult, and I read all the Eugène Ionesco plays to get a proper analysis of this one.

 

And how effective was the study of all these works in the correct analysis of the text?

- Very much, there are two elements of duplication and repetition in all his plays. In all of his plays, one thing is increasing, in "Chairs" it’s  number of seats, in "Rhinoceros" the number of rhinoceroses increases , and in " The Bald Soprano " the thing that is increasing is the loss of language.

In addition to language, we witness the abundance of other elements such as yellow color, tea glasses, etc. in the scene,

Yes, it seems to me that Ionesco, as a Frenchman, is focused on people being English. English people are generally serious, dry, disciplined, nosy, arrogant and superstitious people who are very fond of tea; So I included rising teacups to objectify the multiplicity.

Throughout the show, we see routine and sometimes boring events, events that are very similar to our lives.

- He  believed that there is no real connection between humans, and if there was, World War II would never have happened with the number of deaths. People practically cannot talk to each other and there is no communication between them. Words have become packages that we use only in repetition.

Life patterns make modern man look like patterns and therefore gender, class, etc. are no longer important. These patterns exist exactly and humans fit into them.