The Living Theatre reading the US premier of Albert Camus’s Revolt In Asturias (1936) at WhiteBox LES, as part of “Acts of Sedition”, during Election day, November 6, 2016.

Inside WhiteBox, the strongest performance was the US premiere of Albert Camus’s little-known 1936 anti-fascist play Revolt in Asturias, translated into English by Isabella Pinheiro and Robert Rochin. Presented in collaboration with the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and the Living Theatre, the 40-minute reading offered a musing on the social and political systems that led to the uprising and suppression of coal miners in the impoverished province of Asturias, Spain, in October, 1935. Though not a great literary work by Camus, it showed his concern for acts of social justice. The reading also had morbid implications for the protest events that unfolded in real time outside the gallery walls the very next day. The spontaneous street demonstrations across the United States echoed the play’s depiction of the initial actions of the workers.