The Bald Soprano
–It happens sometimes–

Based on the play by Eugène Ionesco

The more we speak, the less we communicate

The Bald Soprano is a profoundly anti-theatrical play – so, indeed, its own author described it. First staged in 1950, it provoked outrage: audiences responded with mass walkouts and open hostility. And yet, in the years that followed, it came to be recognised as one of the most significant plays in world theatre, irrevocably altering the terms of modern dramaturgy.

Adopting everyday phrases, verbal banalities, and linguistic automatisms, the Romanian founder of what came to be known as the Theatre of the Absurd – though he himself rejected the label – positions language as an obstacle, laying bare the failure of human communication.

Ionesco, with his unique ability to elicit both laughter and unease, leaves his characters defenceless before words. He firmly resists the construction of a conventional plot, reverses every known theatrical form, and, ultimately, emerges as one of the key innovators of twentieth-century theatre, with The Bald Soprano widely considered his masterwork.

In the version proposed by Marilena Katranidou, the play becomes a field of inquiry into the mechanisms of human behaviour. A stage proposition shaped around the absurd, a dramaturgy composed of disparate materials, riddled with traps that appear illogically logical. A story made of clichés: two typical English couples, a maid, a fire chief, a ringing doorbell, a possible fire. And yet, the real question lies elsewhere: how many layers of common sense are required before the absurd emerges?

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The production originated a decade ago within the Department of Theatre of the School of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki as a directing project. Since then, it has travelled across festivals and stages in Greece and abroad. Most recently, it was presented at Amalia Theatre (November–December 2025).