Huis clos

Garcin, Inès and Estelle have been brought together in an unusual place for a reason unknown to them... Very quickly, they discover that each one's role is to become the tormentor of the other two... "Hell is other people." "Others may try to objectify me, but cannot rob me of my freedom. Huis clos is at the heart of Sartrean existentialism. Once Man has chosen his actions, there is no going back. Sartre pushes this idea to its extreme: contemplating one's past life and one's absence from Earth is a form of torture for our characters..." Sartre wrote in fifteen days in 1943 this one-act play, which he originally titled Les Autres. Even so, considering Huis Clos as a pessimistic play would be a mistake. Huis Clos is a boulevard play with metaphysical depth, owing to this paradoxical vocation being even today, in France and abroad, one of the greatest successes of contemporary French theatre. Man ought to be able to own his choices for eternity. Huis Clos therefore invites us to give meaning to life rather than merely endure it. "We always die too early – or too late. And yet life is there, finished; the line has been drawn, the sum must be tallied. You are nothing else but your life".