2024–2025
The Chairs
Playwright: Eugène Ionesco
February 6, 2025 – February 23, 2025
The Mainstage
About this play
An old man and old woman live alone in a tower surrounded by water. The old man has a great message to deliver to humanity before he dies, and they have invited everyone to hear it. As the guests arrive — invisible, represented only by chairs — the couple scramble to seat them all. An Orator is hired to deliver the message. When he finally speaks, he can produce only gibberish. The play is a meditation on the futility of communication and the void that awaits.
A tragicomedy in which an elderly couple populate an empty stage with chairs for invisible guests.
About the Playwright
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.