There’s much to be said for the work of Albert Camus, apparently. I’ve had some servants read his stuff and excitedly summarize for me whilst I steam-bathe, and his novels in particular—The Stranger, The Plague—have mildly stimulated my formidable and overactive imagination, which is really the most I can ask for. I didn’t care much for the play that was just “three people stuck in a room together, making each other miserable.” “That sounds like Hell,” I remarked to the summarizing servant. “Exactly! It is!” he shouted back. Well, no one makes mock of Caligula that way, so I had the insolent boy drawn and quartered.
What was the point of all—oh yes. So it seems an early Camus piece for the stage, bearing my name and loosely based on my admittedly theatrical life, is seeing a resurgence of popularity. As well it should, if only for its subject. And yet…perhaps I would have less of a problem with dramatists and their ilk riding my coattails if I were acknowledged as the coat-wearer. At the Washington Shakespeare Company last summer, they laughed, laughed at my audition for the part of myself. “Just too over the top” were their words. Well fuck you, I was nervous.
Funny, I don’t remember this poorly staged scene from my life.
It is for that humiliation alone—not the manifold historical inaccuracies, heresies, and libel contained therein—that I am calling for a boycott of this play. It brings me no joy to spurn a work of art that owes me everything. But then again, I do love seeing actors starve.
—Caligula
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