Something is taking place, nothing is happening.

The room is full, the room is empty.

This is the first time.

This is the last ever.

The players in Ionesco’s very bare room come to every evening afresh. They must purge themselves, use technique to play afresh. The room they inhabit belongs to someone else who once owned (and now wants to re-sell) the menagerie of wasted chairs. He is elsewhere, perhaps in a busy city, perhaps dust… leaving the old couple as custodians of his forgotten room. Janitors of emptiness. Keepers of nothing. They are left behind. Stuck with figments and fragments.

Everything has passed. The people here are in-between… perhaps about to become something else. The old couple are out of step with the times. Fallen out of history. They are subject to a force which fragments their life into self-repeating fragments, miniature games, standards, rituals.
Running at a standstill.

They must keep playing to the end.