The Roman emperor Gaius Caligula (‘Bootikins’ to his friends and family, few of whom survived him) has had a bad press for nearly two thousand years.

When the aged Tiberius made Caligula his heir, he announced: “I am nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom and a Phaethon for the world.”

The young man did his best to live up to that gloomy prediction. He declared himself a god, appointed his horse consul, declared war on the sea, and turned the palace into a brothel.

“So much for the man,” Suetonius summed up, “now for the monster.”

Now Canberra’s newest theatre company is bringing the notorious tyrant back to life.

Performative Theatre Company, dedicated to youth-led thought-provoking works, launches this week with the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus’s Caligula.

First performed in Paris in 1945, Camus’s play begins after the death of Drusilla, Caligula’s sister and lover. Devastated, the young emperor discovers that the world cannot satisfy him. Obsessed with the impossible, asking for the moon, he tries to exercise a false freedom through murder, cruelty, and the systematic perversion of all values.

“He rejects friendship and love, simple human solidarity, good and evil,” Camus wrote. “But if his truth is to revolt against destiny, his mistake is to deny mankind.”

It is part of the 20^th century’s fascination with Caligula, from Robert Graves’s I Claudius and John Hurt’s unforgettable portrayal in the BBC series, to Ralph Bates’s rational psychopath in ITV’s Caesars, or Malcolm McDowell in the notorious 1979 film, in which Penthouse hijacked Gore Vidal’s study of power.

Performative Theatre Company’s production draws on three periods: Ancient Rome, where the play is set; the 1930s and 1940s, when Camus was writing in the shadow of world war; and the modern day.

“We’ve tried to take aspects from those three times and bring them together to create a new world that this play of Caligula is set in,” director Isaiah Prichard said.

Over the action looms an enormous bust of the historical Caligula: an imperial head staring down on the violence, plotting, poetry competitions, and philosophical wreckage below.

Around it, marble-finished blocks become tables, chairs, and other pieces of the world. The costumes begin as cream, draped toga-ish forms, then become more colourful and modern as Caligula’s tyranny intensifies.

Behind the imperial monster, however, is a mission to give young Canberra artists a pathway into independent theatre.

“I’ve had quite a bit of experience at ANU in student theatre,” Prichard said. He directed Caleb Lewis’s war play Dogfall there in 2025 and, with Off the Ledge’s Lachlan Houen, the post-apocalyptic dark comedy Mr Burns in 2023.

“The quality of the youth artists there is such a high standard. There seems to be an untalked-about gap between student theatre and community theatre. I founded Performative Theatre Company to bridge that gap and give opportunity to youth artists to enter the independent theatre space.”

The cast are all in their 20s, many of whom Prichard worked with at ANU. The youth of the company is fitting: Caligula became emperor at 24 and was assassinated at 28, while Camus himself was only 25 when he began writing the play.

“Camus uses Caligula as a self-insert to explore some of his philosophy,” Prichard said.

For him, that confrontation with absurdity is the reason to stage the play now.

“Camus describes absurdism as the clash between the human desire for meaning and the uncaring nature of the universe,” Prichard said. “Who wants to be told that life doesn’t have any meaning? But I think that’s a necessary philosophy to face, or one that we come across living in such an absurd time.”

Prichard said Caligula is about power and control, but also about the different ways people search for meaning.

“There are lots of modern-day tyrannical dictators at the moment,” he said.

“But more than that, Caligula speaks to the inherent human desire for finding meaning in, as Camus dubs it, an uncaring universe.

“It shows different ways through the different characters of trying to tackle that meaning. Some people gravitate to love; some people gravitate to art; some people gravitate to nature.

“Caligula himself rejects that and takes the idea that nothing means anything to its logical conclusion. The play shows that potentially is not the correct freedom to take.”

Prichard does not want to prescribe a single meaning for audiences, but said that the intellectual character Cherea offers the play’s humane counterargument: life may not mean anything, but that does not mean we should make each other suffer.

“I want people to come out thinking about absurdity and the place it has in everyday life,” he said.

But for Prichard, the reason for doing it is also much simpler.

“I’m really excited for audiences to see that local youth can really present something amazing. More than anything, we’re doing this for fun. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get a group of friends, of brilliant creatives together, and play dress-up.”

Caligula runs from 1 to 4 July at ACT Hub, Causeway Hall, Kingston. Tickets: Caligula – ACT Hub.