The Print Room Presents A New Adaptation of Camus' THE OUTSIDER

"Mother died today. Or was it yesterday, I can't be certain."

The Print Room at The Coronet is delighted to present a new commission, the first major UK stage dramatisation of Albert Camus' masterpiece The Outsider, adapted by Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri.

Camus' sparse parable about the human condition is regarded as a modern classic and one of modern literature's most celebrated works.

'The Outsider, with its distilled narrative, is the perfect work to adapt for the stage. Camus' novel transmutes the mood of an era in a spellbinding story about grief, the difficulty of love, and the insidious capacity of society to repress individual truth. In an extraordinary way it is also relevant to the problems of our times. I was delighted to be able to adapt this great novel for the Print Room at the Coronet. With its rich history and its artistic programme that is distinguished, international and brave, the Print Room is exactly the right place to perform The Outsider.' Ben Okri.

The Outsider is the story of Mersault, a young French clerk in 1940s Algeria, disengaged from a world in which he doesn't really fit. Following his unemotional response to the death of his mother, and his senseless killing of someone he barely knows under the glare of the Algerian sun, he finds himself on trial not only for the murder but also for his refusal to conform to society's expectations.

Albert Camus, French novelist, essayist, philosopher and Nobel laureate,was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century. Camus was born in French Algeria to an impoverished family. A forefather of existentialism and absurdist literature, The Outsider (L'Etranger) was his first novel, published in 1942, and has become an international literary classic. A poll for Le Monde ranked it as number one on its 100 books of the 20th Century.

Ben Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post- colonial traditions, and one of contemporary literature's most important writers. Growing up in Nigeria and England, his poetry, novels, short fictions and essays mesh Western European and African influences. Part of a trilogy, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991, making him then the youngest ever winner of the prize.

Director Abbey Wright was previously at the Print Room at the Coronet with The Cocktail Party. She is Artistic Director of tackroom theatre and previously Resident at the Donmar, Staff Director to Danny Boyle at the National Theatre and Associate Director at the New Vic and Nuffield. Recent directing includes: Why is the Sky Blue? (Southwark Playhouse), The Mountaintop, Diana of Dobson's, Talent, Ghosts (New Vic); The Mentalists (Wyndham's); The Father, Mrs Lowry and Son (Trafalgar Studios); Dublin Carol (Donmar); The Grapes of Wrath (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Nuffield/Royal and Derngate/Nottingham Playhouse)

The Set and Costume designer is Richard Hudson, the Lighting Designer is David Plater and the Sound Designer Matt Regan.