Eugene Ionesco’s
'The Lesson'

Direction : Mejrema Reuter
Translation: Saidus Saklaen
Production: Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT)

Someone knocks at the door of the house of one Professor. A maid, named Marie, appears and opens the door. Enters the room a beautiful young girl student. She waits in the room for the Professor. This is how the story of the play begins.

The girl student looks polite, well brought-up, but vivacious, dynamic and of a cheerful disposition. The Professor enters the room. He is also excessively polite, but subdued by his timidity and very professional. He opines that she is a smart and intelligent student, and it will be no problem to prepare her for all the doctoral degrees which the girl student wishes to complete in a three-weeks period.

The Professor starts with arithmetic. The girl student proves good in adding, but she cannot make a satisfactory score in subtracting. Apparently only too inoffensive at the beginning, the Professor grows more and more sure of himself, aggressive and domineering as the drama runs its course. He asserts that it would be good for the girl student to go not for a total but partial doctorate. Marie enters and advises the Professor not to get excited. The Professor says that he is well aware of how to behave with a young lady. He then wants to start teaching the girl student the principles of philology. The student is happy as she is told that it is possible in fifteen-minutes to acquire the fundamental principles of the comparative and linguistic philology of the Neo-Spanish languages. Marie enters again and implores the Professor not to teach philology. She warns him saying that philology is the worst of all.

The Professor does not care about Marie’s warning, and continues to teach the student the various rules and characteristics of different languages. However, this lecture of the Professor does not apparently have any meaning, and only makes her gradually become more and more tired and sleepy. Her tooth aches and she groans in unbearable pains, but the Professor continues his way of teaching and does not pay heed to her. With a knife in his hand, the Professor starts showing her how to pronounce the word ‘knife’ in different languages. In so doing, he becomes very aggressive, loses control over himself and at once kills the student with the knife.

Enters Marie and finds that the Professor has killed the student despite her forewarnings. The Professor tries to hide the dead body. Marie blames the Professor of the murder, but he bluntly refuses the charge. However, he eventually confesses and says—he does not know why he killed her. Marie recalls that it must be altogether forty coffins including the one of this girl student, but Marie is also sure of it that it is she who has to get things all right at any cost. The Professor is scared of the heinous act he has committed and, however, appeased when Marie tells him that she would tackle the situation.

What way does Marie think she can save the Professor? How can the Professor get rid of the situation he has pushed himself in by killing as many as forty students?

It has been a common phenomenon that a killer uses a political symbol and is saved from the charges of murders.