Hell

Based on the novel by Henri Barbusse

Adapted by Lane Savadove & Ross Beschler

April 2011

The German Society Library

A mysterious and provocative foray into “Hell.”

EgoPo concluded its Theatre of Cruelty season with a dramatization of France's most scandalous novel, Hell (L’Enfer). Adapted from Henri Barbusse's novel by artistic director Lane Savadove and EgoPo regular Ross Beschler, this play followed an obsessed voyeur as he peers into the lives of those around him through a hole he discovers in the wall of his boarding house room.

Creative Team

Lane Savadove … Director

Tony Hostetter … Set Designer & Production Manager

Janus Stefanowicz … Costume Designer

Matt Sharp … Lighting & Sound Designer

Ren Manley … Video Design

Tom Fusco … Technical Director

Michael Chittenden … Stage Manager

Chris Bratek … Assistant Stage Manager

Alexander McCarty … Assistant Stage Manager

Cast

Ross Beschler

Mary Lee Bednarek

Allen Radway

Ed Swidey

Cindy Spitko

Sean Lally

Sara Yoko Howard

Sarah Rachel Schol

About Henri Barbusse

Henri Barbusse (17 May 1873 – 30 August 1935) was a French novelist, short story writer, journalist, poet and political activist.

He began his literary career in the 1890s as a Symbolist poet and continued as a neo-Naturalist novelist; in 1916, he published Under Fire, a novel about World War I based on his experience which is described as one of the earliest works of the Lost Generation movement or as the work which started it; the novel had a major impact on the later writers of the movement, namely on Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque.

Barbusse is considered one of the important French writers of 1910–1939 who mingled the war memories with moral and political meditations.