“As the world is incomprehensible to me, I am waiting for someone to explain it.” Eugene Ionesco.

The couple in Eugene Ionesco’s 1952 play ‘The Chairs’, live in a circular room in a tower in the middle of a circular island surrounded by nothing but stagnant sea. They are isolated from the world and also from each other.

“Let’s amuse ourselves by making believe”.

Preparing for a big announcement to be made which will affect the future mankind, the couple greet imaginary guests and reminisce about past times but ultimately the empty chairs and invisible crowd become a metaphor for the reality of unreality.

In this seminal example of the Theatre of the Absurd genre; time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid. The futility and loneliness of the human condition is highlighted, perhaps suggesting that the only way to bring meaning to our time on earth is to decide for ourselves what is meaningful