The Chairs
by Eugène Ionesco, translated by Donald M. Allen
The Red Room at Society Hill Playhouse
September 4 - 16, 2009
Directed by Tina Brock
A lighthouse at the edge of a watery nighttime universe
Director
Tina Brock
Associate Producer
Brian Adoff
Costume Design/Construction
Brian Strachan/Rufus Cttman
Lighting Design
Leigh A. Mumford
Set Design
Lisi Stoessel
Sound Design
Tina Brock
Technical Direction/Set Construction
Stephen Hungerford
Light & Sound Operator
Nicole Rolo
Lighthouse Crew
Jesse Delaney & Liam Brock
Creative Consultant, Third Eye, Chair Acquisition Specialist
Kali Lela Colton
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
This production is funded in part by a generous grant from
The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
The IRC participates in the
Barrymore Awards Honoring Excellence in Theater.
The IRC is a non-profit 501C3 corporation.
Playing time is 80 minutes; there will be no intermission.
GLOSSARY
(Words We Had to Look Up – In Order of Their Appearance)
Semiramis was a legendary Assyrian queen, also known as Semiramide, Semiramida, or Shamiram. Many legends have accumulated around her personality. Various efforts have been made to identify her with real persons. She is sometimes identified with Shammuramat, the Babylonian wife of Shamshi-Adad V (ruled 811 BC–808 BC).
General Factotum is a general savant or a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities. The word derives from the Latin command (imperative construction) fac totum (“do/make everything”).
Chilblains (also known as pernio and perniosis) is a medical condition that is often confused with frostbite and trench foot. Chilblains are acral ulcers (that is, ulcers affecting the extremities) that occur when a predisposed individual is exposed to cold and humidity. The cold exposure damages capillary beds in the skin, which in turn can cause redness, itching, blisters, and inflammation. Chilblains are often idiopathic in origin but can be manifestations of serious medical conditions that need to be investigated. Chilblains can be prevented by keeping the feet and hands warm in cold weather. Smoking cessation and consultation with a dermatologist are advised.
Dais is a raised platform (as in a hall or large room).
Reviews
The Chairs (2009)
"People laughed. People cried. Mostly we just sat wide-eyed and amazed."
"Ionesco's classic one-act, "The Chairs," is an extremely difficult work, and Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, under Tina Brock's brilliant direction, nails it."
Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"For the most part it’s two characters, several doors and a couple of windows. That’s exactly what makes it such a tricky piece to pull off, and Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s production is such a continual unfolding of revelations. Credit the remarkable Tina Brock, who directs and stars with Bob Schmidt, for a note-perfect rendition that manages to create endearing characterizations while careening between absurdities."
Shaun Brady, Philadelphia City Paper
"The thick metaphors shine through in fantastic comedic performances (particularly by Brock), that each infuses with the sense of frustration and humor at the confusing flickers of hope cast by the otherwise unyielding meaninglessness of existence."
Jim Rutter, EDGE Philadelphia
Director's Notes
September 2009
Greetings.
Welcome to our “lighthouse at the edge of a watery nighttime universe.” We’re honored to have you here tonight to share Ionesco’s beautiful and tragic world with us.
It was the experience of seeing The Chairs performed many years ago that began my love affair with this extraordinary playwright. I remember feeling like I was at the circus -- the excitement was overwhelming, trying to absorb all the language, the colorful characters, and the wonderful theatricality of the Old Man’s story. I gave up the need to catch it all and simply let the play wash over me like a typhoon. Excited and exhausted at the same time, laughing and crying simultaneously, my seven year-old self had been conjured again, and the experience was liberating. Several days later, I became very aware of the ways that hour and a half in the theater made me think differently about the world and my place in it.
Earlier this year, we saw Exit the King on Broadway, and I was again beside my seven year-old self, a kid at the circus. What an extraordinary experience it is for the designers, the actors and the audience to create together a magical island where anything is possible, where we have the luxury of becoming a kid again for a few moments. The Old Woman encourages the Old Man to reveal his message in The Chairs because “it’s in speaking that ideas come to us, words…and then we, in our own words find perhaps everything…the city, too, and the garden and we are orphans no longer.”
For the next two weeks, in spaces tucked here and there throughout Philadelphia, over 185 “messages will be communicated” at over 80 locations, and we’ll all be richer for having experienced these together.
Thanks to everyone who helped us build The Chairs. Working on this show has been a transformative experience. The Chairs marks the IRC’s 10th production in three years, the last of two in 2009 celebrating the anniversary of Eugene Ionesco’s 100th birthday, which also included our production of The Lesson at L’Etage Cabaret in February. In March 2010, we’re looking ahead to present several of Tennessee William’s lesser-produced works including Gnadiges Fraulein (translated as The Gracious Lady). Williams himself called it a Slapstick Tragedy, “akin to vaudeville, burlesque, and slapstick with a dash of pop art thrown in.” Surreal, featuring abstract characters and nonsense dialogue, its action is in the spirit of an animated cartoon, representing a trend in Tennessee Williams’ late years toward the absurdist theatre of Beckett and Ionesco.
I hope to see you at the circus.
Tina Brock
Artistic Director
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday, September 6, 2009
by Toby Zinman
Fringe: The Chairs, The Annihilation Point and more
The Chairs. It's tragic. It's hilarious. It's political. It's psychological. It's absurd.
People laughed. People cried. Mostly we just sat wide-eyed and amazed.
Ionesco's classic one-act, "The Chairs," is an extremely difficult work, and Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, under Tina Brock's brilliant direction, nails it.
The bizarre plot involves an old couple (Bob Schmidt and the breathtakingly brave Tina Brock) living in a lighthouse. Somehow Lisi Stoessel's set design transformed Society Hill Playhouse's Red Room into a white, circular space with two big windows and nine doors. The Old Man has a message for the world and has invited everyone to come to hear it. Many, many guests arrive, invisible to us, but with whom the Old Man and Old Woman talk and flirt and reminisce and explain.
Much of the action of the play involves real chairs being brought in for the guests to sit on. Many, many, many chairs.
The costumes (by Brian Strachan and Rufus Cottman) are as hilarious and tragic as everything else. Like every tiny element in this production, the Old Woman's bridal veil becomes a focus of fascination, speaking much meaning.
As Ionesco eloquently told us, "A work of art is the expression of an incommunicable reality that one tries to communicate - and which sometimes can be communicated. That is its paradox and its truth."
$20. 7:30 p.m. tomorrow through Saturday and Sept. 15 and 16 at Society Hill Playhouse, 5-7 S. Eighth St.
Philadelphia City Paper
by Shaun Brady
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
by The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium
There aren’t many elements to contend with in Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs beyond, well, all those chairs.
For the most part it’s two characters, several doors and a couple of windows. That’s exactly what makes it such a tricky piece to pull off, and Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s production is such a continual unfolding of revelations. Credit the remarkable Tina Brock, who directs and stars with Bob Schmidt, for a note-perfect rendition that manages to create endearing characterizations while careening between absurdities.
EDGE Philadelphia
September 8, 2009
by Jim Rutter
Absurd couple setting The Chairs at the Apolcalypse
Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s (IRC) production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs provides a more absurd take on the atomic family structure. At the end of their lives, married couple Old Man (Bob Schmidt) and Old Woman (Tina Brock) lay holed up in a post-apocalyptic lighthouse. While bickering their as they rehash the stories of their youth in a world long gone, they wait for the arrival of hundreds of guests and an orator (Lee Pucklis) who will bring a message that gives coherent meaning to all their lives.
The thick metaphors shine through in fantastic comedic performances (particularly by Brock), that each infuses with the sense of frustration and humor at the confusing flickers of hope cast by the otherwise unyielding meaninglessness of existence.
Set in the Red Room Cabaret of the Society Hill Playhouse, Lisi Stoessel’s set finally shows the potential of that space, and together with Leigh A. Mumford’s vivid lighting design puts a small-company’s professional stamp onto the haphazard eclecticism of the Fringe Festival.
Philadelphia City Paper
September 1, 2009
Best of the Fest by Mark Cofta
Live Arts/Fringe picks from City Paper staff
The Chairs
Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium seems made for the Fringe; dedicated to presenting classic absurdist plays, it'll continue its 100th-anniversary celebration of Eugene Ionesco's birth with 1952's The Chairs, following its acclaimed February production of Ionesco's silly yet sobering The Lesson. Set in "a lighthouse at the edge of a watery nighttime universe," the Romanian master's tragic farce reveals two old people arranging seating for a presentation that will reveal life's meaning — or not.
Sept. 4-6, 8-13, 15-16, 7:30 p.m., $20, Red Room at Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. Eighth St.
AOL
The Chairs – Philly Fringe
by Steve Ramm
“The Chairs” at Philly Fringe Festival –
by Steve Ramm
When you enter the small performance space called the Red Room at the Society Hill Playhouse there are 37 chairs in the room. 35 of them are there for the audience to sit in and two are on the “stage” (along with LOTS of doors for entrances and exits) to soon be occupied by actors Tina Brock and Bob Schmidt as characters described by playwright Eugene Ionesco as the “Old Man” and “Old Woman”. By the end of this 80-minute absurdist farce there are another 20 (or more!) chairs – of various sizes, shapes and condition – filling the stage! Why are they here? Well, the old man and woman are on a lonely island and they have invited many people – including military and royalty – to come hear “The Orator”. And there never seem to be enough chairs. That, I’m afraid, is the best I can describe this show. Ionesco’s plays are not the easiest to comprehend but his plays are a specialty of Brock, who heads the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium and direct this play, as well another Ionesco presented earlier this year, and she provides enough comic stage action, and a brilliant characterization of the woman to easily entertain you for the show’s length, even if you aren’t sure why the words are being said. Schmidt – another founder of IRC – is her match in the acting department. They are ying and yang to each other. Sure, there’s one more on stage character (and I lot of invisible ones too) but he was – at least to me – superfluous.
The show was to end last night, but has been extended into the end of the week. If you can score a ticket (remember only 35 people get to experience each performance) by all means do!
This is the last of the Live-arts/Fringe shows I’ll have a chance to see because of travel plans. More Philly theater reviews coming in a few weeks when the local season gets under way.