Entrancing Exit at ACT

I think I'd like Canada's The Virtual Stage and Electric Company Theatre to mount every play I never want to see again. I'm convinced they could make it interesting and vital.

My interest in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit was minimal when I first read it in college and has only waned over the years. The play is a mostly stale pile of ideas and philosophies instead of plot, characters as metaphors rather than people. Is it possible we've simply outgrown existentialism? Historically, the play remains interesting – especially in view of the fact that Sartre's musing on the tortures of hell debuted in Paris in 1944 during the Nazi occupation.

Director Kim Collier (co-founder of Electric Company) is clearly aware that No Exit has some interesting ideas, but is in need of some major goosing.

Enter technology.

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