My plays have been performed before children, workers, and peasants, and they have well understood the meaning of my theatre. What is needed for people to watch my theatre is a freshness and openness of mind.
Interpretation
Eugene Ionesco emphasizes the importance of openness and fresh perspectives for audiences to truly understand and appreciate theatre.
In this quote, Eugene Ionesco highlights that his plays resonate with various demographics, including children and workers, indicating that great art is accessible regardless of social status. He asserts that a key requirement for viewers to grasp the essence of his theatre is a willingness to approach it with a fresh and open mind, suggesting that preconceived notions can hinder one's appreciation of art.
In practice
In a discussion about the accessibility of theatre to all audience types.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.
I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption.
As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.
As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself ... All of which I've earned a living doing.
I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colorful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you're looking at is something totally opposite. It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It's more challenging to look at the other side.
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