The Théâtre de la Huchette is a theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

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This small theatre in Paris' Left Bank, located at 23 rue de la Huchette in the 5th arrondissement, is known for playing Eugene Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

's absurdist double-bill of The Lesson and The Bald Soprano

The Bald Soprano

La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...

 in permanent repertory since 1957, as "Spectacle Ionesco." Today, a third play is presented and this changes from time to time. Despite the theatre's tiny size of only 85 seats, a total of over one and a half million spectators have attended the show.

The theatre's first ever production, by Georges Vitaly, was Albertina by Valentino Bompiani

Valentino Bompiani

Valentino Silvio Bompiani was an Italian publisher, writer and playwright.Born in Ascoli Piceno , in 1929 he founded the publishing house carrying his name, which became one of the most important in Italy. It is currently part of RCS Libri.He debuted as a playwright in 1931 with L’amante virtuosa...

. The date was 26th April 1948. In 1951 he produced Monsieur Bobl'le of Georges Schehadé

Georges Schehadé

Georges Schehadé was a Lebanese playwright and poet writing in French.-Life and career:Georges Schehadé was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek orthodox family but spent most of his life in Beirut, Lebanon...

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In 1952 Marcel Pinard took over as owner, and brought to the theatre the works of Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

, Lorca

Lorca

Lorca is a municipality and town in the autonomous community of Murcia in southeastern Spain, 36 miles southwest of the city of Murcia. It had a population of 92,694 in 2010, up from the 2001 census total of 77,477. Lorca is the municipality with the second-largest surface area in Spain with...

, Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

, Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

 and Jean Tardieu

Jean Tardieu

Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...

. Pinard died in 1975, and the theatre was threatened with closure. The actors who had played the Ionesco double bill since 1957 formed a limited company in order to continue production.

The closest métro and RER stations are: Saint-Michel

Saint-Michel (Paris Metro)

Saint-Michel is a station on Line 4 of the Paris Métro in the 5th arrondissement. Located in the Quartier Latin, it offers a connection to the St-Michel - Notre-Dame RER station...

 and Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame.