The Empty Chair

So much talk, so little said.
So this actor gets up in front of a political convention to endorse their party's candidate. Big Deal. Has done it before with that party, and who listens to celebrity endorsements, anyway? But then he does something without setting the scene or preparing the context, something that upstages all the political speeches and carefully scripted presentations: he ad-libs a debate with an empty  chair that is supposed to represent the candidate of the opposing party.
Ooo Aaah! Gasp! What is going on? The delegates, most of whom were probably not paying much attention anyway, are confused and then annoyed. And since things were pretty pro forma up 'till then, the media, hungry for something to talk about, seized on this and ran with it,
Now let me say first of all, the content of this impromptu skit has not really been the issue. Yes, there were a few who noticed that things got "nasty" in this imaginary dialog. But most have been fixated on the empty chair. So much so that polls have shown little or no impact on the way people continue to feel about that actor.
But why is everyone obsessing over what Jon Stewart wittily called "The Old Man and the Seat"? Actually, empty chairs are important in two major parts of my life: acting and psychotherapy. Yes, empty chairs have been used as stand-ins as far back as when Edward R. Murrow used an empty seat to represent Joe McCarthy in that confrontation back on '50s TV. But even today, the "empty chair" technique is used on stage and in treatment.
Actors will use empty chairs to play against both in auditions and in full performances. Acting (he said, echoing his acting teacher Annie DiMartino down at Long Wharf Theater) is always responding to the others on stage, playing off of someone. And in a monolog, one still needs to have others  "there," hence the empty chair. Even in the classic Shakespearean monologs, the actor still needs a focus, a purpose. An empty chair.
And in clinical work, the empty chair represents someone who is not there but is needed there. In groups, if a member leaves for whatever reason, a chair is left vacant to help the others in the group to deal  with the loss. When a client needs to confront someone, to say something not otherwise possible, to face an aspect of him/herself, an empty chair representing that is used.
We  will not go into the classic empty chairs, like the Siege Perilous at King Arthur's Round Table supposed to be reserved for the Perfect Knight (eventually filled by Galahad, I believe.) Nor the empty chair saved for Elijah at the Passover Seder (plus an empty wineglass, although I'm not sure of that.)
No, the point for me is not the politics involved. Given the way most politicians avoid answering questions anyway, an empty chair may be an apt metaphor for everyone concerned. But the way so many today are answering questions here without knowing a coherent answer (nor, to be fair, what question is being asked), it should come as no surprise that they end up talking to an empty chair.