ARTicles vol.4 i.2c: Sartre and the Theater of Questions

What inspired the most famous philosopher of his day to write for the stage?

Sartre’s first venture into theater occurred while he was a French prisoner of war, captured by the Nazis. Given permission to write and produce a Christmas play for the soldiers in his POW camp, Sartre penned a quasi-religious drama with subtle anti-Nazi themes. It escaped the censorship of his captors. Sartre quickly realized the potential of theater in giving hope and a political message.

After a year of imprisonment in Germany, Sartre negotiated his own release, and returning to occupied France he began working for the resistance. Initially his philosophy followed in the footsteps of Husserl and Heidegger – two forerunners of existentialism – but the desperate circumstances of the resistance forced Sartre to understand the urgency of making moral choices every day. When Nazi occupation forces began executing three innocent French civilians for each German soldier killed by the resistance, Sartre and his friends in the resistance movement found themselves on a moral tightrope. Their actions fueled murder. Had they all become guilty? Could they continue fighting and bear the blood they saw on their own hands? The situation shocked Sartre into a lifelong conviction that man must negate the moral emptiness of the universe by filling it with actions that have moral value.

Sartre next took up arms in the theatre. In his first mature plays, The Flies and No Exit, the playwright-philosopher dramatized that one must assume responsibility for one’s life; our choices influence the world we live in. As a political activist writing for the theatre, Sartre had discovered a way to bridge the gap between ivory-tower philosophy and everyday life. These early plays were produced almost simultaneously with the publication of his philosophical breakthrough, Being and Nothingness, in 1943. Sartre was clearly convinced that philosophizing was not enough; the theatre could be a force in changing the world.

Sartre admired the ancient Greek model of a mythological theatre that always addressed contemporary politics and could move men to action. In contrast to George Stevens, who thought that WWII had foreclosed the possibility of tragedy, he saw that his own times reflected the tragic vision, “the very severity of these plays,” he said, “is in keeping with the severity of life.” Could theatre become a vehicle of freedom? In defense of French playwright Jean Anouilh’s anti-Nazi adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, Sartre proclaimed that a new activist theatre was arising: Anouilh’s version of Antigone was not merely a character who rises against the state, “She represents a naked will, a pure, free choice; in her there is no distinguishing between passion and action.”

Sartre participated in rehearsals for his plays, and during these rehearsals he received an education in what theatre could accomplish. His focus was on the actor, and what he shows us about ourselves. Sartre saw the actor as an existential hero. In his essays on theatre, Sartre expresses bold ideas about what an actor transmits to the spectator. An actor on stage risks everything to embody the precarious human condition, letting us reflect on how we build our lives through choices. For Sartre, the actor, much like the philosopher, demonstrates that the unexamined life is not life.

In Sartre’s masterpiece No Exit, the lifeline between the actor and spectator is fused with the stage. Three characters in hell stand in judgment of one another. They pace like tigers in a cage, each unfolding the dirty laundry of the past, defending innumerable sins. They watch each other with the intensity of spectators at a theatre. The pacifist Garcin, condemned to the firing squad after fleeing a war rather than speaking out against it, cries out that history will remember him as a coward. While these characters seem paralyzed by the choices they’ve made, Sartre was quick to affirm that this play is about freedom; “the importance of freedom to us, the importance of changing acts by other acts. No matter what circle of hell we are living in, I think we are free to break out of it.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Jean-Paul Sartre’s birth. The French playwright represents un ecrivain engagé – a writer committed to political action. Sartre’s theatre still moves us because the playwright reached beyond the confines of the stage. Sartre asks us to look at ourselves. What have we made of our lives? Have we accepted the gift of freedom? We must hold ourselves accountable. We must have an impact on the world we live in. Sartre demands bravery from his audience: the courage to choose your own life in your own time.

Mark Poklemba is a second-year dramaturg at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.