The French playwright of Romanian descent, Eugène Ionesco, is, alongside the Irishman Samuel Beckett, the most prominent representative of the theatre of the absurd which flourished in the middle of the last century. His play The Chairs is an evocative meditation on the meaning of human existence. In his play, Ionesco has created a harrowing yet grotesque portrait of a world in which many earn to articulate the great truth of their life, yet this truth constantly eludes them.

In the retro futuristic setting of a decaying, dilapidated and wasted world on the fringes of civilization, there remains one last refuge, a place that is both a remnant of the past and a harbinger of a forgotten tomorrow. There, the Old Woman and the Old Man watch their final sunrise and spend their last day together. After many years of living together, they have experienced virtually everything and told each other all their stories, yet at the same time, much remains unsaid, unspoken. Have they forgotten the turning points of their lives? Do they remember them differently? Or, do they wish to torment themselves with memories until death? Or, is it even simpler, and is their last day intended primarily to overcome the silence and boredom? Memories emerge in fragments, like shards of the past that pile up in the room with every chair brought in, as if, just before the end, they wanted to review and understand once more everything that used to be.

The new production of The Chairs brings together Bojan Emeršič and Gregor Baković, actors who have shared the stage countless times in their theatrical careers and appeared together before television and film cameras. Almost three decades ago, they sought meaning as Estragon and Vladimir in the legendary production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, directed by Dušan Jovanović. Thus, we can also think of the Old Man and the Old Woman as Vladimir and Estragon at the end of their journey. Their meeting returns as a kind of theatrical echo of a bygone era and as a continuation of a long conversation about meaning, transience, and the act of waiting.