Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu; November 26, 1909 – March 28, 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright and one of the foremost figures of the Theatre of the Absurd. Born in Romania and settled in Paris, he wrote mostly in French and is best known for subverting the conventions of realist theatre to expose the absurdity of bourgeois life and the breakdown of human communication. His debut, The Bald Soprano (1950), ran in Paris for decades. He was elected to the Académie française in 1970.