A Nutty Professor Is Dangling Above You 'Teach, Teacher, Teachest,' Inspired by Ionesco
Ken JaworowskiSeptember 20, 2014: David Koteles makes bold claims in the program notes for Teach, Teacher, Teachest. His script, inspired by Eugène Ionesco’s The Lesson, is a work that “bends the rules of communication” and explores “the breakdown of language.” Sure, some of that may have happened. But all I know for certain is that I laughed quite a lot. In Mr. Koteles’s version, as in the original, a naïve student meets with a professor for a round of tutoring. The lecture goes awry, with absurd speeches and constant non sequiturs, until everything that’s said seems to hold double or triple meanings, or maybe none at all — so much can be projected (or not) onto both plays. While the original, from 1951, is seen as a condemnation of totalitarianism, Mr. Koteles attacks big business, government and religion with a babbling professor whose blind adherence to dogma is both comical and disturbing. The teacher extols “job creators” and big business, while condemning the poor and immigrants. Judged against current political discourse, his circular reasonings and hyperboles sometimes don’t seem so exaggerated.
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