Collaborators Erika Batdorf, Anastasia Phillips and Karin Randoja are adapting a classic tragic farce at this year’s Creemore Arts Fest. Together, they will stage The Chairs, a play by Eugene Ionesco, considered a quintessential masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd.
The play is about a man and woman in their 90s who live in total isolation and carry on a ridiculous conversation while they await the arrival of their make-believe guests who are assembling to hear the man’s delusional “message.” As the imaginary guests arrive the couple puts out more and more chairs until the stage is a chaotic tangle of empty chairs.
When asked what was appealing about this genre, Batdorf said, “I find the world absurd right now because we are continuing to go forward at this time when we’re very aware of the end of the world. So there is a kind of absurdity right now, and the character that I play is trying to figure out how to give a message at a time when no one’s interested in your message even if you have one.”
“That’s the beauty of Ionesco,” she says. “It’s the beauty of this style of theatre. It’s really an opportunity to have a dialogue about an idea rather than see two normal people in life.”
Batdorf and Phillips worked together on The Gogo Show clown performance at last year’s festival. In considering another collaboration they wanted something fun and not too cerebral. The Chairs offered versatility and opportunity.
Batdorf and Randoja describe their adaptation as a wacky dream set within Avening Hall where the space becomes the confines of the couple’s isolation, told in a hallucinogenic surreal place and time.
Like clown, it is meant to provoke as well as entertain.
Batdorf says she wanted to bring Randoja in to direct because she’s a devisor, someone that creates theatre out of nothing.
“I know that she has a spirit of making things fun and entertaining and isn’t afraid of experimentation,” says Batdorf. “If anyone is familiar with The Chairs, and I suspect many people will not be, it’s not a museum piece... It’s a wacky abbreviated fun exploration of the space of the absurd.”
Randoja says the script ended up servicing as a great launching pad.
“It became for us sort of an exploration of three women approaching this classic text,” says Randoja. “You’re not going to see The Chairs as it perhaps has been done before or the full script, or the full feeling of it.”
The Chairs was written in 1951 and portrays some dated gender roles which get flipped when two women play the roles. Their age and isolation only serves to intensify their reliance on one another.
“They love each other. They hate each other. They’re sick of each other. They can’t live without each other. It’s all those complexities of long-term relationships and a power structure and how that power shifts,” says Randoja.
“It’s so absurd because what they start doing to each other, and to themselves, through this play is so human. And that’s why I think being a human is absolutely absurd. It’s full of juxtapositions, contradictions, polarities.”
The Chairs will be staged at Avening Hall on Friday, Oct. 2. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Limited tickets are available at the door for $55.
