No Regrets: Albert Camus and Edith Piaf in the French Resistance

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Chelsea Saunders

A close-up of Amanda Lauricella.

Amanda Lauricella

This production from Fermat's Last Theater Co. pairs Albert Camus and Edith Piaf and their roles in the French Resistance during World War II. It will be an evening of Piaf’s classic songs and Camus’ writings for the underground newspaper Combat. The cast includes Amanda Lauracelli as Piaf, Melvin Hinton as Camus, and Daniel Graupner as the narrator, with music by Aubrie Jacobson on piano and Autumn Maria Reed on bass. No Regrets shows at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 26 and 2 p.m. on Oct. 27.

media release: Saturday, October 26, 7:30pm & Sunday, October 27, 2:00pm: Fermat's Last Theater Co. presents No Regrets – Albert Camus and Edith Piaf in the French Resistance.

Program consists of readings from the editorials Camus wrote for the underground resistance newspaper Combat during the Liberation of Paris, and six of Piaf's iconic songs (sung by Amanda Lauricella), with a narrator for historical background. There is a talkback for the Saturday show with UW History professor Emma Kuby. Free as always.

The writer and philosopher Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913 to pied noir parents – the term used for European immigrants to French north Africa. Camus’ father was killed at Verdun in October of 1914 and his mother was deaf, mostly mute and illiterate. He would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Camus had not been in Paris long when the Germans invaded. He volunteered for the army but was rejected because he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 17. He returned to Paris in 1943 and became editor of the underground resistance newspaper Combat in 1944. In this show you will hear from the editorials he wrote for Combat along with songs by Edith Piaf.

And here is info on Piaf:

Edith Piaf was born in 1915 and abandoned at birth by her mother who was a singer and circus performer. Her father was a street acrobat and when he enlisted in the French army in 1916, her grandmother took the child to a brothel where she was looked after by the madam and working girls of the establishment. She would begin singing in the streets of Paris at the age of fourteen. Her talent was quickly recognized and in a few years she was singing in the top nightclubs in Paris.