Scena Theatre: No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

“No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre ranks as one of the classics of the modern theatre. It is a one-act philosophical play by French Nobel Laureate. Jean-Paul Sartre and was first performed in 1944 in Occupied Paris and later published in 1945. Its original French title “Huis clos” is sometimes translated as “In Camera” or “Dead End.”

The play proposes that “hell is other people” –rather than a state created by God. The play begins with a Valet ushering three recently deceased people into a room. They are Garci, a revolutionary who betrayed his own cause and wants to be reassured that he is not a coward; Estelle a nymphomaniac who has killed her illegitimate child; and Inez, a predatory lesbian. All the characters require another person for self-definition, yet each one is attracted to the person most likely to discomfort them. Their inability to escape from each other more than guarantees their eternal torture in this “self-service” or as Garcia refers to it “cafeteria” of Hell. Hence, the famous tag line that Sartre delivers through the powerful medium of his play “Hell is other people.”

This production is by turns chilling, darkly funny, erotic and more than compelling as three individuals struggle for “survival” in the Afterlife. The shifting alliances that they form with madly driven passions only succeed in in
sensing the third party who then becomes both voyeur and literally “odd man out” in this infernal “menage a trois.”

Ages: Ages 18+

Runtime: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Content Warnings: This production contains mild use of swearing, references to self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, grief, and infant loss, as well as frequent sexual content and violence.

Quotes from “No Exit”:

“Hell- is other people.”
Garcin

“I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven
knows what it will become.”

“You are-your life, and nothing else.”

“So, this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told
about torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old
wives’ tales! No need for red-hot pokers. Hell- is other people!”

“I could never bare the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me.
It always made me want to do just the opposite.”

“As for me I am mean; that means that I need the suffering of others to exist.
A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone.

I am extinguished.”

“Much more likely that you’ll hurt me. Still what does it matter? If I’ve got to suffer, it may as well be
at your hands, your pretty hands.”

INEZ:
“Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It’s what one does, and nothing else, that
shows the stuff that one is made of.”

GARCIN:
“I died too soon. I wasn’t allowed time to- to do my deeds.”

INEZ:
One always dies too soon–or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are–your life, and nothing else.”

What is “Existentialism”?

Any of various philosophies, most influential in continental Europe from about 1930 to about mid-20th Century,
that have in common an interpretation of human existence in the world that stresses its concreteness and its problematic character.

Who is Jean-Paul Sartre?

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905-April 15, 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and political activist, biographer and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of Existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”

His plays and books include “No Exit”, “Dirty Hands”, “The Condemned of Altona”, “The Flies” and “Kean”. “Being and Nothingness,” Paths of Freedom”, “The Wall” and “The Words”. He also wrote the screenplay for the John Huston film “Freud”.