Ma main man, Sartre.

  This week was an especially busy one for Kenny! I was on the marketing team for a college production; we put on a double bill of French absurdist plays in translation- 'Le Malentendu' (The Misunderstanding) by Albert Camus and 'Huis Clos' (No Exit) by Jean-Paul Sartre. Marketing turned out to be wayyy more stressful than I originally thought it would be as my friend, Emma, and I were in charge of designing the poster, sorting out the ticketing system which was IMMENSELY complicated as there were banks and PayPal involved, sorting out the programmes, the online Facebook event and the serving of drinks in the interval. Emma and I had many stressful late nights, intense marketing meetings and angry moments as our producer became really demanding, at one point expecting us to walk to all of the colleges in Oxford (there are 38 in total!) to put up posters! I remember being really angry at all of the demands but looking back, it wasn't the producer's fault as she had a lot of responsibilities too. In addition, this week, I started my French Literary Theory module which I currently find the most difficult of all my papers. So, I was also busy and stressed with that!

  However, despite the stressful build up, the shows went so well! We had three performances in total and the final show actually sold out, due to the awesome marketing of course ;). Camus' 'The Misunderstanding' is about a man who has been away from his home for many years. When he returns, his mother (who is now a widow) and his sister are making a living by taking in lodgers and killing them. 'No Exit' by Sartre is about three dead people in hell, who are punished by being being locked in a room together for all eternity. As you can clearly see, the plays were very cheerful(!)

One of my set texts for exam this year is Samuel Beckett's 'En Attendant Godot', another absurdist play that my college did a performance of last term that I also did the marketing for. Theatre of the Absurd really fascinates me because it's just so, well, absurd; it features characters that are trapped in incomprehensible worlds and characters that are often in pairs, 'pseudo-couples', who are trapped in clichés and routines. Some of the features of absurdist plays include religion, existentialism, comedy and nonsensical language.

Judgin' u 

  Out of the two plays that we put on, 'No Exit' was my favourite. This is because I found the portrayal of hell so intriguing and one of the most famous lines from the play is "L'enfer, c'est les autres", which literally translates to 'Hell is other people.' Sartre is putting forward the idea that hell might not be the literal fire and brimstone and burning that everyone assumes it is; hell can be the company of other people because people can torture and hurt you, not necessarily physically but with their words. Chilling stuff.

  I am studying Sartre's 'Qu'est ce que la littérature?' as one of my set texts for French Literary Theory and I really like his chapter on 'Pourquoi Ecrire?', which includes his views on why people write. It took me a very long time to understand this chapter (again, I emphasise the difficulty of reading philosophy and literary criticism in French- English is already difficult enough to understand!) and I eventually had a 'Eureka!' moment at half two in the morning. According to Sartre, we write because through it, we can express ourselves and be free as through writing, our ideas can take off and  literature can exist forever as it is re-read by different audiences over the years. Pretty cool stuff, huh? Sartre's existentialism still drives me insane with how pretentious it can be at times. And he also had a very weird relationship with Simone De Beauvoir.
But that is a story for another day. Peace out.