Word: ionesco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first, there's just a thickening of the skin. Suddenly the gloves and shoes become hooves; a horn sprouts menacingly from the forehead. Finally, a few angry grunts...voila, a rhinoceros. Thus does Eugene Ionesco give birth to his favorite symbol of modern "bourgeois" man. When, in Rhinoceros, the creature starts multiplying into a nasty herd, you have the beginning of an ugly, conformist and "sloganized" society that has become the playwright's chief target for over two decades of political and theatrical writing...
...Ionesco has always remained astray from the "herd." A staunch anti-conformist, he sees the individual artist, and not politics, as the vehicle for genuine social change. He remains resolutely opposed to politically "committed" theatre and, since 1960, has proclaimed himself a "right-winged anarchist" critical of any form of government whatsoever, especially of the disciplined structure of a socialist society...
...especially lucky for Ionesco-philes that the author stopped in Boston for the first time last week during a three-week national lecture tour. During a reception at the French Consulate in Boston, he managed to spare twenty minutes for an interview, parts of which are excerpted in this article. Also interviewing Ionesco at this time was Victor Gaeton, a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts studying the political aspects of Ionesco's plays...
...roundish man with silly-putty lips, Ionesco spoke slowly and deliberately about his political views...
...Ionesco's appearance at Harvard is part of a three-week lecture tour in this country and marks his first public visit to the Boston area...