The Possessed (play)

First English language edition
(publ. Hamish Hamilton, 1960)

The Possessed (in French Les Possédés) is a three-part play written by Albert Camus in 1959. The piece is a theatrical adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel The Possessed, later renamed Demons. Camus despised nihilism and viewed Dostoyevsky's work as a prophecy about nihilism's devastating effects. He directed a production of the play at the Théâtre Antoine in 1959,^[1] the year before he died, which he financed in part with the money he received with his Nobel Prize.^[2] It was a critical success as well as an artistic and technical tour de force: 33 actors, 4 hours long, 7 sets, 24 scenes. The walls could move sideways to reduce the size of each location and the whole stage rotated to allow for immediate set transformations. Camus put the painter and set decorator , who had already illustrated several of his novels (L'Etranger - 1948 Ed.), in charge of the demanding task of designing these multiple and complex theater sets ^[3]

References[]

External links[]

• Interview with Camus, covering the play and its production at the Théâtre Antoine

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