In the last century it has become commonplace that faithfulness to the playwright, and the play, is not necessarily a commendable quality. The play is currently viewed as raw material for a production, a pre-text for a more complex and final text, which reflects the universe of the director rather than that of the playwright. The performance is a work of art in which dialogue is only one component among others, although usually of crucial importance. Similarly, the playwright is viewed as merely the designer of the verbal aspects of the final text, among other designers. The director, in contrast, is viewed as the actual sender of the message and accountable to audience and critics for the results of his decisions: whether he or she has impoverished or enriched the play, whether or not he or she succeeded in conveying some new insight. Without elaborating on a justification of this view, there is no doubt that the production of Ionesco's The Chairs, directed by Rina Yerushalmi at the Cameri Theatre, Tel Aviv, 1990, is a clear instance of such an approach.

Perhaps the most striking decision of Yerushalmi was to get rid of any deviation from consistent characterization, although prescribed by the playwright in the stage directions of the play. Following Martin Esslin, with regard to plays within the style of the so-called ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, such deviations are among the features which are held responsible for the sense of absurdity and/or grotesque that such texts produce in the audience.