For an actor in the Juilliard Drama Division, the beginning of the third year is a challenging time. Having just completed two years of rigorous training in techniques of acting, vocal production (spoken and sung), speech, and movement—not to mention theater history, stage combat, and text analysis—it is time for the actors to bring their newly honed instruments to the stage. In order to bring these disparate elements of their training into the work, the Drama Division reserves as the first production for the third-year actors a play of an epic nature: one that contains stylistic and linguistic challenges, one that calls for large physical characterizations, that contains events and actions beyond the everyday or naturalistic. This year, that play is Peter Weiss’s The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade—also known (thankfully) as Marat/Sade.

“I shall not stoop to combat cowardly murderers who worm their way in the dark to stab me. Let the honest man turn up who has anything to reproach me with, and if ever I disobeyed the laws of sternest virtue, I beg him to publish the proofs of my dishonor.”
Jean-Paul Marat

On July 13, 1793, the 50-year-old Jean-Paul Marat—radical leader of the French Revolution, hero of the people and inciter of the Revolution’s violent “Reign of Terror”—was stabbed to death in his bath in his Paris home, by the 25-year-old Charlotte Corday. In her trial, Corday explained to the police commissioner that she was “convinced the flames of Civil War were about to be ignited throughout France and certain that Marat was the principal author of these disasters.” She testified that “she wished to sacrifice her life for her country.” All the evidence seems to suggest that Corday was acting completely on her own initiative, and was not coerced by the anti-revolutionary “Girondists.”

The Musicians from Marat/Sade. Costume sketch by Christianne Myers.

Corday, a conservative girl from the French country town of Saturnin, stood up from her Bible studies and, leaving her Bible open, left her home and traveled to Paris, buying a knife on the way. After arriving in Paris, Corday was twice denied entry at Marat’s door. Marat was suffering from an extreme case of eczema and, in an effort to soothe his burning skin, was working all day from his cool bath. Her third attempt to see him finally resulted in Marat calling for the girl to be allowed in, as he overheard her say that she had information about a “Girondist” conspiracy. She concealed the knife in her sleeve and entered, to find Marat in his bath, writing by candlelight. Corday told Marat that she was there to give him a list of the names of the people involved in the conspiracy. As Marat was writing down the names, she drew the knife from her sleeve and, believing herself to be a hero of the French people, saving them from the evil Revolution, she stabbed Marat through the heart.

It was Marat who was initially considered the hero, in a country of people itching for revolution and impressed by his passion and honesty as a leader. Marat had been the first to speak with brutal honesty about the political situation of the people, with words like these: “No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too arrogant, too cowardly, too vile, too depraved. If one wants to see how enslaved we are one only needs to take a philosophical look at the capital and the ethics of its inhabitants.” Through such famous works as The Chains of Slavery and L’ami du Peuple (The Friend of the People), Marat became recognized as one of the forefathers of socialism and even influenced Karl Marx. Marat had sacrificed a successful career as a physician, his work as a scientist, his luxury, his health, and eventually his life, for the people.

After his death, busts were made and displayed all over France; an obelisk was erected in his honor and a huge funeral procession was held in the streets of Paris. By 1797, four years after his death, more than six major dramas had been written about Marat, portraying him as the nation’s hero. But the tide of public opinion was turning. Marat’s revolutionary ideals had been particularly violent, and politicians and scholars began publicly ridiculing him as a disease-ridden, blood-thirsty monster. A mocking parody of Marat’s funeral procession had been held and children had begun throwing their Marat dolls in the sewers. To a country scared and wounded by the Revolution’s “Reign of Terror” and quickly moving into a counter-revolution, Corday was becoming their new hero.

The Marquis de Sade from Marat/Sade. Costume sketch by Christianne Myers.

On April 27, 1803, 10 years after Marat’s assassination, the Marquis de Sade—serving the last of many prison sentences for his deviant sexual escapades and erotic writings—was transferred to the insane asylum at Charenton, France, where he was to spend the final 11 years of his life. At Charenton, he developed a strong relationship with Francois Simonet de Coulmier, the asylum’s director, and aided him in developing a new therapy program that involved putting on plays with the asylum’s inmates. Sade had already directed plays in the private theater of his castle home, “La Coste,” years before (not to mention “directing” many elaborate orgies in the castle grounds). It is not unreasonable to speculate that one of the plays the Marquis may have directed might have been about Jean-Paul Marat.

In 1963, the German playwright Peter Weiss began writing Marat/Sade with exactly that speculation in mind. Set in 1806, the play follows the course of action as the inmates at Charenton, under Sade’s direction, put on a production for the asylum’s director that tells the story of Marat’s assassination by Corday. Slowly the revolutionary sentiments within the play begin to affect the inmates performing it, and—perhaps according to Sade’s plan—things start to go awry.

Weiss’s play has become a classic of the dramatic repertoire. It is an extraordinary work of the imagination. It is unlikely that the Marquis de Sade and Jean-Paul Marat ever met in their lifetimes, yet Weiss writes a number of long conversations between them within the play that the inmates perform. Weiss has posed a theatrical question: “What if these two philosophies came together?” It is this aspect of the play that first intrigued director Jose Carrasquillo, who will direct Juilliard’s production of Marat/Sade this month: the philosophical discussion at the play’s core, between Marat the perpetual revolutionary and the Marquis, who, at the end of his life, after continual imprisonment, has become disillusioned with revolution. It is as if Sade has come to stand for the French people at the time, who, by 1806, had turned firmly against the Revolution, wounded by its violent bloodshed. For Carrasquillo, this made “the scope of the story very theatrical.” For him, the issues at stake are universal: revolution against maintaining the status quo, socialism against monarchy, political diffidents against the mentally ill. Unlike the most famous production of the play by Peter Brooks—which set up the play as an asylum that we looked in on, to watch the actors perform—Jose Carrasquillo and his designers Christianne Myers and Hee Soo Kim are working to make this production feel as if “we, the audience, are actually inmates in the asylum coming to watch de Sade’s play.” With Carrasquillo’s history of award-winning productions at the Washington Shakespeare Company and the Kennedy Center, it is an exciting prospect to look forward to his version of the challenging Marat/Sade.

Through the play was originally written in German verse, Juilliard’s third-year actors will work from an English translation of Marat/Sade by Geoffrey Skelton, adapted into verse by Adrian Mitchell. Performances will run from Wednesday, October 25 to Sunday October 28 at 8 p.m. in Studio 301 on the third floor of the Juilliard building. Come see how Group 32 will rise to meet the challenges of this intriguing play.

Craig Baldwin, a fourth-year actor, is a member of Group 31.