Season Select: The Chairs

The Chairs

By Eugène Ionesco

Translated by Martin Crimp

Directed by Vanessa Stalling

Fast Facts

Playing: Touchstone Theatre | June 12 - September 27
Featuring: Colleen Madden and James Ridge
Genre: Absurdist Farce
Last Seen at APT: First Time!
Go If You Liked: The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool (2024), Stones in his Pockets (2022), Exit the King (2018)

About The Chairs

If you’ve never ventured into the realm of absurdist theater before, it may feel a bit daunting upon first glance. The good news is that the wonderfully weird world of absurdism is probably closer to something you recognize than you think. Absurdism offers perspective on the everyday parts of being human by taking away their respective meaning. Theater critic Martin Esslin is credited with defining the genre in 1960, drawing from an Ionesco quote: “Absurd is that which has no purpose, or goal, or objective.”

Romanian playwright Eugéne Ionesco was one of the most defining voices in the absurdist movement. Born in 1909, Ionesco spent much of his early life traveling between France and Romania and eventually settled in Paris with his own family following the Liberation in 1944. In the aftermath of two apocalyptic world wars, Ionesco along with other French 20th century dramatists developed their own signature style that sought to embody meaninglessness, the void of existence itself. “To me,” Ionesco said, “the world seems grotesque, absurd, ridiculous, painful.” The theater of the absurd reflects these sentiments in a distorted, sometimes nonsensical reality.

As much as the genre touches on the bizarre and bleak, it also seeks out humor as a tool to cope with feelings of insignificance. In many ways, we have the absurdist farce to thank for contemporary comedy that inverts pre-established social expectations. Ionesco believed “the world is a comedy because it is ridiculous. It’s comical because it’s tragic.”

So, pull up many chairs, and embrace the irrational. You may just learn something about your reality. Or, not. C'est la vie.