The Lesson, by Eugène Ionesco

In The Lesson, education isn’t enlightenment. It’s rehearsal.

Eugène Ionesco’s savage absurdist masterpiece tracks the moment teaching becomes domination, and language becomes a blunt instrument of power. What unfolds is funny until it isn’t.

The setting is a parlor. The hour is afternoon. A professor and a student. A lesson that begins in politeness and ends somewhere else entirely. Between them, a blackboard — the oldest technology of authority — chalked over and erased, chalked over and erased.

Ionesco wrote The Lesson in 1951. It has not aged. What it describes is present in every institution that has ever called itself a place of learning: the seduction of the pedagogical relationship, the violence hiding inside grammar, the smile that precedes submission. The play is over before you understand what just happened.

Come expecting a lecture. Leave having received none.

Featuring,

Sturgis Warner* & Sophie Kelly-Hedrick*

*denotes a member of Actor’s Equity Association 

The Lesson · Instructions

• Your ticket is all-inclusive and includes food and coffee.
• Doors open on time. The lesson begins on time. Do not be late.
• Seating is limited and arranged as part of the performance environment.
• The parlor is small. This is intentional.
• The performance features haze and sudden shifts in register.

Directed by Christopher Paul Meyer

Casting by Jenn Haltman

Tech Direction by Joshua K Boniello

All performances have limited capacity and may sell out. Tickets may be released through the waitlist as available. Walk-ins are welcome to inquire; seating is not guaranteed. The performance features haze.