No Exit - GEDS offers a pair of tickets to their latest show

Published: 16 May 2022

“No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre - Performed in English - "Huis Clos" in French

"Hell is other people..."  Three strangers trapped together in a "hell" eerily similar to the real world find their stories are intertwined, with each alienating the other yet unable to escape. Passions, animosities, and power struggles soon create explosive tension. GEDS have kindly offered a pair of tickets to one lucky knowitall.ch reader. Read below to enter the competition.

Musings from Director Gary Bird

Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, "No Exit" (French title "Huis Clos") is often claimed to be Sartre’s clearest literary work demonstrating what he meant in "Being and Nothingness" as existentialism. He wrote the play in Paris during the Nazi Occupation, and it premiered on 27 May 1944 only 11 days before D-Day.

Because the play was censored and monitored by the Nazi occupiers, Sartre had to be careful of what he said so as not to set off any "red flags".

Sartre identified with the French Resistance, so any “messages” or themes in his writing had to be subtextual. For example, by setting the play in a mythical place (i.e., Hell) he avoided any charges that might have been brought against him as depicting the Occupation – which he was clearly doing.

Some examples of the Nazi subtext: the "Valet" in reality the closest thing to a jailer; or the elegant "Second Empire" furnishings of the room in Hell (a hell uncannily resembling the real world) alluding to an authoritarian regime that was eventually overthrown.

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