Abstract: (“Theater Without a Teacher” or About the Beginnings of E. Ionesco as a Playwright) E. Ionesco’s first playwriting attempt is the play English Without a Teacher, written in Romanian, a play that is close to the radical metatheatrical experiments of Luigy Pirandello, due to its explicit metatheatrical dimension, For the history of the early 20th century’s theatre, Pirandello’s radical metatheatrical message represents an act of theatrical pedagogy that can be analyzed on three related dimensions: an analysis of complex theatrical machinery, a denial of the then popular Boulevard Theatre, and an act of criticism against the cultural and aesthetical practices of the epoch. In effect, Pirandello’s metatheatrical experiments represent explicit and promising manifestations for the renewal of the European theatre; and here one should also notice the implicit criticism against the ideological structures that were populating the cultural imaginary of the time. Ionesco’s early play follows the aesthetical and cultural principles generated by Pirandello’s iconoclast views. The play English Without Teacher is built as an act of dispute with the theatrical space and with the spectator’s cultural expectations, and finally it becomes an attempt to critically reevaluate the theatre and its potential. In short, this is an act of theatrical self-pedagogy that will later lay the foundations for the theatrical experiments that were to come.