And now The Possessed has reached the stage after several years of labour and persistence. And yet I am well aware of all that separates the play from that amazing novel! I merely tried to follow the book’s undercurrent and to proceed as it does from satiric comedy to drama and then to tragedy. Both the original and the dramatic adaptation start from a certain realism and end up in tragic stylizations. As for the rest, I tried, amidst this cast, preposterous, panting world full of outbursts and scenes of violence, never to lose the threadof suffering and affection that markes Dostoyevsky’s universe so close to each of us. Dostoyevsky’s characters, as we all know well by now, are neither odd nor absurd. They are like us; we have the same heart. And if The Possessed is a prophetic book, this is not only because it prefigures our nihilism, but also because its protagonists are torn or dead souls unable to love and suffering from that inability, wanting to believe and yet unable to do so - like those who people our society and our spiritual world today. The subject of this work is just as much the murder of Shatov (inspired by a real event - the assassination of the student Ivanov by the nihilist Nechayev) as the spiritual adventures of Stavrogin, a contemporary hero. Hence I have dramatized not only one of the masterpieces of world literature but also a work of current application.
- Albert Camus
Missing Stories We're collecting short stories / anecdotes / trivia about each show. If you've got something to share send the editors a message.
