Thinking inside the box
Andy Thompson and Laara Sadiq (above) experience an emoptional moment in the play No Exit, which opens on Oct. 22 at Sagebrush Theatre. Director Kim Collier (left) created the unique staging of the classic existentialist play by putting the actors into a room and using cameras to project their interactions onto screens for the audience to see.
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Updated: October 20, 2009 3:58 PM
No Exit, the next Western Canada Theatre play to be performed, will challenge its audience.
First, however, it will challenge its four actors, three of whom will perform within a box, while the fourth — a character that in the original play was marginal — must help lead the audience through the action.
But what else can one expect from the play written by the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, a play that introduced the world to Sartre’s infamous observation that “hell is other people.”
Jonathon Young, artistic director of the Electric Company Theatre — which is bringing its unique version of the play to Kamloops — said the staging began as an idea in director Kim Collier’s mind and then developed from experiment to reality.
No Exit begins with the valet — played by Young — leading three people into a hotel room.
It is closed in, with seven cameras projecting images onto screens on the stage, providing the audience with their window on the interactions of the trio.
“It’s very unusual for the actors,” Young said.
“They have a sense of the audience. They can hear them. They can hear them laughing.
“They know they’re there but they can’t see them.”
Rehearsals have had to be “meticulous,” Young said, because of the challenges acting within the box create.
Young said Collier’s vision was to create an entrapment for the three.
They’ve been taken to the room — and discover it is hell “and that their opportunity for change has passed.
“So now, they have to live with a set of actions that will haunt them forever.”
His character, Cradeau, was originally written to be a device to get the three — Joseph Garcin, a coward who caused his wife’s suicide, Ines Serrano, a lesbian clerk who caused the death of a man by his wife, and Estelle Rigault, a socialite who cheated on her husband — into the room.
“We have had to create a script for the valet. What would he do when he intracts with the audience? With the screens?,” Young said.
“In many ways, this is like a play called The Valet running at the same time as the play No Exit.”
That reality could be challenging for those who revere the original Sartre work, Young said.
Compressing the script into a brief description is difficult, however, the plot takes the audience along as the trio discover they must now spend eternity together in hell.
There is no escape — no exit for them.
In addition to Young, the play stars Lucia Frangione as Estelle, Laara Sadiq as Ines and Andy Thompson as Garcin.
The play is being presented in partnership with The Virtual Stage.
It opens Oct. 22 and continues to Oct. 31 at the Sagebrush Theatre, 1300 Ninth Ave.
Tickets are $22 for adults, seniors, $16 for youth and are available at the Kamloops Live! Box Office, 1025 Lorne St., 250-374-5483 or online at kamloopslive.com.
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