No Exit: The New Jean-Paul Sartre Experience November 2, 2011

Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, has been skillfully re-imagined by a team of eager artists in Brooklyn, NY and The New Jean-Paul Sartre Experience has refashioned the existential classic even further.
 
This one-act depiction of the afterlife has become a play, within a gallery, within a film. A story in which three deceased characters are locked in a room together for eternity, waiting for their torturer. As they begin to probe at each other’s sins and memories, they dreadfully find out Sartre’s most famous quotation, “Hell is other people”.
 
This fall No Exit will be playing at The Secret Theatre in Queens NY. Involving the gallery opening, intimate performances, and followed by a reception in the space, with towering portraits of the perished characters surrounding the audience.
 
From there the production just starts gaining momentum. The next step is producing No Exit, the feature length film. Aside from documenting the entire process, The New Jean-Paul Sartre Experience has implied a specific thesis into their production. Actors will be rehearsed for a stage performance one weekend, only to begin shooting the film in a much larger set right away, achieving literal stage adaptation.
 
For the strong company of four, achieving captivating theater onto the screen will be an intricate, careful process. But with extremely specific theatrical directing, and a distinct color palate, this mixed-media production has become a creative, engaging insight on the possibilities of adaptation. Approaching nearly seventy years now, this play is certainly not done being presented yet.

CAST

(in order of appearance)

Garcin: James Ortiz
Valet: Troy Peckham
Inez: Ingrid Kullberg-Bendz                         
Estelle: Emily Fleischer