Zha Mingzhe's 1997 production of Sartre's Morts sans sépulture takes bold creative license in the form of retooled dialogues; hard-edged stage design; moody, ironic music; and the brutal acoustic ‘facsimile’ of torture to reimagine the play for Chinese audiences. Zha's production is neither an exuberant celebration of ‘heroism’ as the term is conventionally understood, nor a parable-like play given to ‘philosophizing’ the core tenets of Sartre's existentialism. Rather, it is a full-scale, in-your-face presentation of ‘total heroism’: heroism that is flawed, falling far short of the kind of heroism idealized in the annals or mythologies of the so-called ‘red classics’, but it is heroism nonetheless. It is an interrogation, in the fullest sense of the term, of the ‘essence’ of being tested in the crucible of ferocious tortures, and a ‘cruel’ antidote much needed to shock the numbed nerves of the body politic.