Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco 

Screaming with laughter right into the great void of death. Ionesco's landmark play about a King at the end of his 400-year-long life going out with colliding planets and crumbling walls and taking everyone and everything with him. 

Directed by iDiOM founder Glenn Hergenhahn-Zhao

• Tyler Detrick as King Bringer the First
• Annie Loggins as Queen Marguerite
• Karianne Nelson-Brannan as Queen Marie
• Lucas Naylor as The Doctor
• Molly Garrison as Juliette
• Michael Nelson-Brannan as The Guard

First staged in 1962, Exit the King is one of Ionesco’s lasting works of absurd theater, melding biting satire with existential inquiry. As the kingdom decays around him, the 400-year-old King Bérenger refuses to relinquish his throne or confront the inevitability of death. His court—a gallery of tragicomic characters—witnesses his final unraveling as the King struggles to

reconcile his crumbling authority with his own mortality. Under Hergenhahn-Zhao’s direction, Exit the King brings its biting political critique and timeless themes of impermanence into sharp focus, drawing parallels to The Tibetan Book of the Dead and its meditations on the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.

This play is about more than just the absurdity of power, It’s a mirror reflecting the universal struggle of letting go. Ionesco’s humor and pathos challenge us to confront our deepest fears while laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Don’t miss this singular exploration of mortality, legacy, and the end of life, filtered through the inimitable lens of the Theater of the Absurd.