Sisyphus Revisited

by Arthur Danin Adler

Play and Screenplay

"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain. whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile hopeless labor. ...But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. ...The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." — Albert Camus                

And that is how we first see this most famous of rebels: alone, at peace, happy with his fate. Until once, the rock will not move. No matter what he does, how long he waits, how much energy he exerts, he cannot push the stone a millimeter off its resting place at the base of the hill. In turn he is uncharacteristically dumbfounded, depressed and angry. Voices begin to harangue him, punishing him with their words. He becomes a slave to their fury. Suddenly an apparition appears which takes the form of his wife. She has come to help him, even though she does not recognize him. As he begins to fill her memory with images of their past life together, Sisyphus realizes that he has abandoned the only weapon with which he is able to define and defend himself. With this in hand, he once again claims his fate as his own.