  For most of the existentialists, theatre is the prime art form, i.e., the one that best allows the artist to use his or her freedom to create a virtual world that simultaneously appeals to the audience’s own freedom (regardless of how we define that freedom, theologically or politically). For Camus, de Beauvoir, Marcel and Sartre, philosophical activity and recognition as playwrights were intimately linked (Goldthorpe 1986). Marcel defined himself as “philosophe-dramaturge” (philosopher-dramatist, see Lazaron 1978), to insist on what was, for him, an indissoluble unity between philosophical meditation and playwriting. Indeed, it is well worth noting that, apart from de Beauvoir (whose single attempt at writing for the theatre was not very successful [see de Beauvoir 1945b and 1962, 672–673]), they were all equally famous as playwrights and as philosophers in their time.