PL AYBILL THE JUST
THE JUST Albert Camus
Translated by Bobby Theodore }{
A pproxi m at e ru n ni ng t i m e: 1 hou r & 40 m i nu t es T her e w ill be no i n t er m ission
ARTIST NOTE: FRANK COX-O’CONNELL
In Albert Camus’ journals from the late forties there’s a one-line scrap that reads: “A play, Dora the bomb-maker: if you love nothing, this can’t end well.” He eventually turned this note into the text you’ll hear tonight. By the time the script made it to a Paris stage in 1949 Dora’s line had been changed to “nothing is simple.” There are corrupting forces in the world. These forces can strip us of our humanity. But the act of resisting the corruption – in any effective way – can in turn strip the resistor of her humanity. This is the paradox that Camus gives us: how do we reconcile moral common sense with the extremism that real change requires? Camus was writing from a Paris that was newly free from Nazi occupation, but not free from its ghosts as a colonizing oppressor: he was looking ahead as much to the problems of France-occupied Algeria as he was responding to the occupation France had just endured.
And so he did what we often do in the theatre, he looked back in order to look forward. The historical moment he chose was 1905 Moscow; a tipping point in society, two weeks after the Bloody Sunday Massacre (thousands of peaceful protesters gathered to call for better working conditions and were fired upon). He looked to the terrorist seed of the Russian Revolution as five citizens leave behind their relative privilege to make the world a better place. Camus saw that the historical lens could give perspective to his culture’s increasingly simplified conversation on the moral complexities of modern violent conflict. And on the human cost of real change. Looking back to look forward, still nothing is simple. Frank Cox-O’Connell, Director of The Just