Reframing nothingness in the kunju adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs

Practitioners of xiqu (traditional Chinese theater) have long appropriated Western plays and theatrical ideas to modernize Chinese tradition for new theatricalities. Primarily, plays driven by plot and characterization have been selected to highlight themes germane to Enlightenment modernity. Yet recently, there have been a few intercultural attempts to adapt the so‐called Absurdist drama with xiqu, in a deliberate deviation from metanarratives that have characterized modern Chinese theater for nearly a century, to reflect better the existential conditions of contemporary individuals. By investigating the actors’ reframing of nothingness in Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe’s adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs, this article argues that Ionesco’s original absence‐presence dynamic has been displaced and transformed in the Chinese context; his concern with frightening nothingness is replaced by kunju’s philosophical reflection on emptiness, which aims at a positive negativity. This adaptation also suggests a new path for Western modernist plays to communicate with classical Chinese culture.