Effie Samara

Sartre Effie Samara

1963. The height of the Cold War. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre will find himself in the biggest existential crisis of his life as he travels to Khrushchev's Soviet Union to witness the "Soviet miracle". He falls in love with KGB agent Lena Zonina, whose passionate questioning of his bourgeois upbringing and his Western roots will force him to reevaluate life and philosophy. Against his principles, he will ask her to marry him, provoke his allies within the Establishment, jeopardise his lifelong association with Simone De Beauvoir and endanger the credibility of his politics and an entire philosophical system. SARTRE shines a light on our contemporary struggles with populism and the rise of the Far-Right by bringing to life a man who placed rebellious action at the heart of his work, his politics and his life and marked an epoch as the dominant force in European thought. SARTRE premiered at the Questors' Theatre in London on 1 August 2016.