19:30, Tue 5th – Wed 6th March 2019 at Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio
Lent Week 7

"The revolution came and went,
And unrest was replaced by discontent."

Unrest swells at the Asylum of Charenton. After years of confinement Marquis de Sade has been given the liberty to stage one of his plays as a recreational activity for the other inmates. De Sade proceeds to harness the neurotic, exposed energy of his co-patients into a story about the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in which they are to play all the roles. Not long ago Marat’s death in the hands of Charlotte Corday had catalysed a bloodbath, the reverberations of which are soon to be felt by the Charenton walls.

Weiss’s text is as topical as it was in the 1960’s, the philosophical discussions between Marat and de Sade prodding at today’s pressure points. What roles is one forced to play, to whom they need to sell their identity to, who benefits from whose revolution?