The Lesson

„The Lesson is, of course, a school play about totalitarianism, indoctrination, abuse, about a kind of dictatorial and hypnotic power of language emptied of meaning. But in this performance we were interested in discovering to what extent it is, more than anything, about childhood memories, transgenerational traumas, dysfunctional families and the toxic relationships within them. That is why we wanted to question to what extent the “lesson” is a type of trauma learned at home, through inherited mechanisms, repeated from generation to generation. We found it very valuable to read the text from the perspective of a family that wants to teach an eternal child (already an adult) an absurd, cruel and useless lesson, every day, endlessly, with the hope that this time the lesson will “do him good”. We discover in the Ionesque play a kind of violence that is subtly mixed with affection, and this makes it much, much harder to rebel, to oppose, to defend yourself.

Bobi Pricop

Eugène Ionesco was born on November 26, 1909, in Slatina. When he was two years old, his parents left Romania and settled in Paris, where his maternal family lived. Returning to Romania, after 1922, he learned Romanian and enrolled in the St. Sava High School. He took his baccalaureate exam at the Colegiul Național "Carol I" in Craiova. He debuted as a poet in 1928, in Tudor Arghezi's magazine Bilete de papagal. His debut book is a volume of verses, Elegii pentru ființe mici (1931, Ed. Scrisul românesc). In 1934, he published his first volume of critical essays, Nu!, which, due to its acidic and irreverent style, became one of the most controversial books of the time. In Romanian, he also published Englezește fără profesor (play, 1943), and in 1992 the non-fiction volume Război cu toata lumea appeared. In 1950, he debuted as a playwright, with the play Cântăreața cheală, staged at the Théâtre des Noctambules, directed by Nicholas Bataille, which was followed by The Lesson, The Chairs and other plays that made him the great French playwright, alongside Samuel Beckett. Member of the French Academy (seat no. 6).

Chronicle selection:

“The two-dimensional, stage set, imagined by set designer Oana Micu, mimics children's books with moving drawings (…) In this parodic horror setting, the crime is symbolic, the victim remains seated on the chair, death is a convention, an allegory of the effects of education on the student. (…) Ionesco's Lesson becomes a cartoon in which the lesson of violence is taught with a smile on his face, situations of (non)communication of the most banal ideas go crazy, ending with the student's demise, and the crime has the symbolic value of the correction in the catalog and of corporal punishment. (…)

The show has the duration and rhythm of a lesson. It starts slowly, seemingly optimistically, and is vaguely charged with unbearable tension, culminating in the predictable dissolution of the student. Small, restrained gestures deliver the satire of the situation: Raluca Păun offers delicious nonverbal comments to the teacher's absurd explanations, Iulia Lazar balances an evil complicity, and Sorin Leoveanu, in his silent gesture of manipulation, restores the structural noncommunication of the system. The direction focuses on the details of the play transmitted with finesse by the three actors: the cold calm of the teacher's repressed violence; the gradual perversion of the student's naivety into the despair of the helplessness of the victim caught in the system's trap. A system that perpetuates educational failure and produces victims on a conveyor belt, because at the teacher's gate a new student prepares to ring the bell and the process resumes, identical from one generation to another.

Oana Cristea Grigorescu, School, how the hell do you want me to grow up / in Scena.ro, 16 Sept. 2024

https://revistascena.ro/cronica-saptamanii/scoala-cum-naiba-vrei-sa-cresc1/

• "An explosion of color, the stage in pink, and no, it's not Barbie, it's Eugène Ionesco's The Lesson. The set designed by Oana Micu excites the spectators, it has a special place in the staging conceived by Bobi Pricop. It's Pop-Art and a lot of plasticity, two-dimensional pieces of furniture, cardboard decor, an exposed theatricality, a transition from anti-theater to meta-theater, the door that opens the show bears the inscription "Homeschooling", Ionesco. (…) Here, with this pedagogical exercise we are at Ionesco, in his world, the world in an inverted mirror, where the dramatic tension is produced, is released without the help of the plot. A student, a teacher, the lesson. A show without plot, but a show in which dramatic tension is integrated into an action plan that captures the audience in a constant growth, to the point of paroxysm, but always a postponed paroxysm, always postponed as in Ravel's bolero. (…)

This show is a magic box, like a chest decorated not with "silenians" (companions of Dionysus intended to provoke healing laughter), but with pink and cardboard monsters, but also a lesson in (non)meaning or, better said, excess of meaning, "a gift of meaning", of theater and always current themes, and when laughter and violence go hand in hand, the laughter stops."

Daniela Firescu, Pedagogy and... theatricality, magazine Ramuri no. 3 / 2024

• "Eugen Ionescu's Lecția, staged by Bobi Pricop at the National Theatre in Craiova, you learn much more quickly that laughter becomes a grimace in the unusual and lugubrious universe of Ionescu's absurdity. Because the uncomfortable hovers over an apparent comic, right from the start of the show.

Bobi Pricop structures the tension in an unusual way, allowing it to invade the space through strong colors – with the help of the set design signed by Oana Micu – and through the hypnotic gazes of the characters, which shine against the background of the screaming colors. (…)

What Bobi Pricop does with The Lesson is a setting of the idea of ​​violence, with a set design that screams about horror while mimicking, bluffing, cartoons, with the support of three exceptional actors, who understood very well that in Ionescu's absurd world, the characters speak with everything, with their eyes, with their hands, with their whole body, even when they are silent, and especially when they are silent."

Anda Simion, The Lesson of Bobi Pricop or how to place violence in the setting, Scrisul Românesc magazine, no. 3/2024, page 21

"The directorial intention is clear, well anchored in the game relationships and, above all, consistently supported throughout. (...) The lesson endlessly repeated by the teacher with criminal tendencies to an ambitious student, under the supervision of the cautious housekeeper, becomes in the performance the ritually repeated ordeal of the education received in the family home.

The consistent support provided by the scenography signed by Oana Micu begins with the suspended space, without exits, in which the parents raise their daughter, isolated as if in a soundproof cell. (…) Raluca Păun (Eleva) combines the naivety and innocence of a neophyte with the defensive strength of a strong personality confronted with the assault of the aberrant formal restrictions that are imposed on her authoritarianly. (…) Playful and charismatic, she finds her sources of humor, self-irony and comic reactions that pigment the relationships in the play without ostentation and define her character in a refined way. (…)

"The Lesson" on the stage of the "Marin Sorescu" National Theatre in Craiova is an essay-performance, full of creative personality. The visual-interpretive duo led by Bobi Pricop works efficiently and suggestively describes a theme that it probes in depth, theatrically exploring a relevant and consistent extra-scenic message. It could be a lesson for parents; an artistic manual for using the parent-child relationship."

Alina Epîngeac, Parenting "Lesson" / d’E-pîn-geac,

9 dec. 2024 https://epingeac.com/2024/12/09/lectia-de-parenting/

"Pricop diverts Ionesco's text from physical/sexual abuse and the idea that all students "kill" their teachers (progress implies contesting the present) to family traumas, the family as a concentration space (in a different way than in Canin), education as abuse. Oana Micu's setting is full of force here, not only is the space configured like an animation, but it is contained in a frame (it seems to be a book with three-dimensional drawings, those cardboard creations that gain volume when the book is opened), while it in turn contains another frame, a miniature, toy theater, in which the characters function at a given moment (…) we are practically in a meta scenographic-directorial construction, a matryoshka that unravels the Ionesco absurdity in an analysis of transgenerational trauma — what we see is just an episode in a paradigmatic series that is transmitted across generations, spaces and time."

Oana Stoica, FNT 2025. A schizoid reality: memory, history, abuse/ scena9 magazine, 2 Dec. 2025 FNT 2025. A schizoid reality: memory, history, abuse

"When you wonder how Eugen Ionescu's The Lesson could be re-read on stage three quarters of a century after its premiere on one of the stages on the Parisian left bank, Oana Micu and Bobi Pricop come and, without betraying the paradigm of the theater of the absurd in which the text is installed from the writing, offer a sample of creativity in action. The set design reconstructs on stage a model typical of paper theater, a popular practice in the 19th century out of the desire to bring home, as entertainment, this ephemeral art in its portable, reduced-scale version. Oana Micu expands it and becomes the frame where, on invisible channels, silhouettes move that materialize the imagination in the minds of the characters as the Student-Teacher antagonism increases. The general atmosphere is close to pop culture, an ingenious dialogue of dramatic-historical times that does not alter the Ionescu spirit, but only adds nuances of the recent extreme. Raluca Păun in Eleva deserves praise, it is surprising how this actress is omitted from all the guild's value rankings. She makes up for the applause she receives after each performance, here in tandem with Sorin Leoveanu (The Teacher) and Iulia Lazăr (Marie).”
Oltița Cîntec, Let’s Gro(o)ve at FNT 2025, Observator cultural magazine, no. 1279 / 28 Oct. 2025 https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/lets-groove-la-fnt-2025/

"In Oana Micu's unique scenographic concept, the audience is introduced to an apparently playful universe, dominated by bright colors and an aesthetic reminiscent of childhood, of pop-up books (…) The decorative elements that move on the rails contribute decisively to building an ambivalence: the decor is at the same time cheerful, welcoming, but also threatening, suggesting the way in which affection and aggression can coexist within family relationships. (…)
Sorin Leoveanu meticulously manages the relationship between the comic and the tragic, building a complex Professor, who oscillates between fragility and cruelty, between apparent tenderness and authoritarian impulses. (…) Raluca Păun, delicious in the nonverbal expressiveness of the character's reactions, concerned with providing the most correct answers possible, or to manifest herself appropriately (see the scene of the cascading laughter) instills an authentic vulnerability in the Student, transforming her into a victim who does not fully understand the rules of the game in which she is caught. (…) Iulia Lazar is remarkable in the role of Maria, functioning as a permanent evil presence, as a permanent warning, her character seems to know the inevitable outcome and participate in it with an unsettling lucidity, with a bewildering indifference, (…) an intense, disturbing gaze.”
Tamara Constantinescu, Power and manipulation in the Homeschooling of the absurd – “Lesson” at the Piatra Neamț Theatre Festival, 2026, Liternet / July 2026 https://agenda.liternet.ro/articol/31507/Tamara-Constantinescu/Puterea-si-manipularea-in-Homeschooling-ul-absurdului-Lectia-la-Festivalul-de-teatru-de-la-Piatra-Neamt-2026.html