About the Play:

The Just (English version of Les Justes) is a full-length drama by Nobel Laureate Albert Camus, translated from the French by Bobby Theodore. Terror stalks the Russian elite, while insurgents craft their bombs and plan for revolution. The Just, based on the true story of the assassination of a Russian Grand Duke in 1905, deals with the morality of murder and terrorism in a gripping fresh, modern translation by Bobby Theodore.

The Just is based on the true story of the 1905 assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Czar's Uncle. The play focuses on a group of Russian revolutionaries and self-proclaimed terrorists – four men and a woman – and their qualms about following through on their intention. With a humanist perspective, Camus delves into the hearts and minds of the idealists, extremists, and realists sitting in an apartment awaiting the arrival of the Grand Duke at the theatre across the street. They each grapple with a heinous choice and ultimately commit murder, in the name of justice. Now, more than ever, the play provokes and reverberates with troubling yet necessary lines of inquiry. Do the ends justify the means? Is terrorism ever a viable choice? What is the true cost of resistance? What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a murderer? What The Just makes so compelling and haunting is the way Camus uses clearly drawn characters to tell such an intimate yet horrific story. He completely understands and sympathizes with his characters but never apologizes for their actions. And although it was written more than fifty years ago and set in another era, The Just is a significant, eerily resonant, moving, and highly theatrical work that remains entirely contemporary and vital. In this play, Camus attempts to understand what it would require to take violent action and assassinate someone in power yet somehow maintain a sense of justice and morality. Is this even possible?

Les Justes is the fourth and last play by Albert Camus. It was written in 1949 and first performed at the Théâtre Hébertot in Paris. This translation of The Just by Bobby Theodore premiered in 2016 at Soulpepper in Toronto, Ontario.

Cast: 2 female, 4 male, with doubling

What people say:

"Bobby Theodore's translation of The Just captures both the human essence of the characters, their inner conflicts as well as their philosophical idealism." — CBC Radio-Canada

"A carefully thought-out and detailed piece of work with superlative performances and magical stagecraft." — Mooney on Theatre

"Soulpepper's riveting production of Albert Camus's The Just presents us with scattered perspectives, from the fragmented intentions of a terrorist cell to our own splintering sympathies for them." — NOW Magazine (Toronto)

About the Playwright:

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French Nobel Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher. Born in Algeria, he studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, then became a journalist, as well as organizing the Theatre de l'équipe, a young avant-garde dramatic group. As a young man, he went to Paris, where he worked on the newspaper Paris Soir before returning to Algiers. His play, Caligula, was written in 1939. After the occupation of France in 1940, Camus became one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement. He edited and contributed to the underground newspaper Combat, which he had helped to found. During the late 1950s, Camus renewed his active interest in the theatre, writing and directing stage adaptations of William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun and Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

Bobby Theodore is a Canadian screenwriter, playwright, and translator who is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada's playwriting program. His first translation, François Archambault's 15 Seconds, was produced across Canada and earned him a nomination for the Governor General's Award for Literary Translation in 2000. Since then, he has gone on to translate over 20 plays from French to English, including the works of some of Quebec's most talented playwrights.