City Garage Presents the US Premiere of

Journeys Among The Dead
by Eugene Ionesco
translated by Barbara Wright

January 29 — March 14, 1999

Directed by Frederíque Michel
Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Produced by Steven Pocock

Cast:
Paul M. Rubenstein	Jean (Jeune)
Richard Grove	Jean (Vieux)
Strawn Bovee	Jean’s Mother; Jean’s Grandmother
Scott Donovan	Jean’s Father
Jennifer Dion	Jean’s Grandmother; Jean’s Mother
Patricia Raquel Lopez	Madame Simpson, Jean’s Stepmother
Anna Pond	Jean’s Sister, Lydia; The Pageboy; The Little Woman
Joel Drazner 	Uncle Ernest; The Film Maker Georges, Jean’s Friend; Peter The Top Civil Servant
Bo Roberts 	Jean’s Grandfather; The Captain; Alexandre, Jean’s Friend
Valerie Ramirez 	Arlette, Jean’s Wile; The Little Woman; The Doll; Violette; The Gypsy Girl

Production Staff:
Lighting, Set, and Sound Design 	Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Assistant Director Light and Sound Operator	Paradorn Thiel
Costumes	Tatiana Alvarez
Stage Manager	Doria Valen

The play runs approximately two hours. There is no intermission

About the Play and the Playwright:

“I have never succeeded in becoming completely used to existence, neither to that of the world, nor to that of others, nor above all to my own, for obviously I cannot know who I am, nor why I am”	—Ionesco

Eugene Ionesco, the father of “theater of the absurd,” was born in Slatina, Romania in 1912. In 1938 he settled permanently in Paris when he received a government grant to study in France and write a thesis on “sin and death in French poetry since Baudelaire.”

One of Ionesco’s final works, and never performed in the United States, Journeys Among the Dead is a dream play that echoes the many preoccupations and anxieties of the most fascinating and unpredictable of world dramatists. It could as aptly be labeled “theatre of fear” as “theatre of the absurd.” Of all his plays, Journeys Among the Dead, may be the most deeply autobiographical. While still exploring the duplicity of language and the impossibility of logical reconciliation, Ionesco mines the painful memories of his childhood, especially those of his father. Indeed, his father's behavior may have been the most important factor in shaping his life. The hatred began when Ionesco witnessed his mother’s attempted suicide after her husband callously derided her. They soon separated. Ionesco’s father moved back to Romania to fight in the Great War, while Ionesco and his sister, Regine, stayed with his mother in Paris. She was forced to work in a factory to sustain the family. When Ionesco was twelve, his mother decided to take the family back to Romania and try to repair her marriage. She then discovered that her husband had secretly divorced her by forging documents and had remarried a woman named Lola. She was forced to relinquish custody of Ionesco and Regine to her ex-husband and return to Paris alone. Lola hated Ionesco and Regine, and cruelly forced Regine to leave Romania and return to Paris to live with her mother. Although Ionesco’s father was rich and owed his mother alimony, he never paid. His mother couldn’t afford the enforcement charges, so she continued working to support herself and Regine without the needed alimony. Ionesco married Rodica Burileano in 1 936, at the age of twenty-four. His mother died the same year. Ionesco met with his father once after his marriage. After a violent political disagreement, Ionesco told his father, “It is better to be on the side of the Jews than to be a stupid idiot. My regards to you, sir.” Those where his last words to his father who died a few years later. Ionesco eventually felt remorse over his treatment of his father. Over a decade later, he admitted, “He was like everyone else. That is what I held against him. That is what I was wrong to hold against him.”

A planned Broadway performance of Journeys Among the Dead, his last play, was canceled before opening.

“For me, the theatre–mine–is most often a confession. I try to project upon the stage an inner drama (incomprehensible to myself) telling myself, nevertheless, that since the microcosm is an image of the macrocosm, it may happen that this torn up, disarticulated inner world is in some way the mirror or the symbol of universal contradictions. No intrigue, then, no architecture, no enigmas to solve but the insoluble unknown, no personalities, but characters without identity (they become, at each moment, the opposite of themselves; they take the place of others and vice-versa), simply a continuity without continuity, a fortuitous sequence without relation of cause to effect, inexplicable adventures or emotional states, or an indescribable but living tangle of intentions, of movements, of passions without unity, plunging into contradiction. It may appear tragic, it may appear comic, or both at once, for I am unable to distinguish the one from the other. I only wish to translate universal implausibility and strangeness, my universe.”

[Material from “Notes On My Theatre” by Eugene Ionesco, Tulane Drama Review, 1963. Biographical information drawn, in part, from “Eugene Ionesco: The hatred of his father” copyright 1997 by Shay Goosens.]