The Chairs

The end of the world never sounded so much fun until Ionesco wrote The Chairs. Sadly, many English translations have seeped the fun out of the original to fit in with their times. The Chairs is a “tragic farce” with a heavier emphasis on farce than tragedy. My translation retains the vivacity and linguistic play of the original without transforming it into a play that Ionesco never wrote. I honor Ionesco’s style that slips between droll playfulness and a dark, stiff silence – and mania – before the void while highlighting the rhythmic and idiomatic language, so that contemporary American audiences can connect to the text more readily.