Marat/Sade
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, published in 1963, is a play by Peter Weiss, directed both on stage and screen by Peter Brook. The title is often shortened to Marat/Sade.
Incorporating dramatic elements characteristic of both Artaud and Bertolt Brecht (a combination some find paradoxical) it is a bloody and unrelenting depiction of human struggle and suffering.
Set in a mental hospital, Marat/Sade is a 'play within a play'. The main story is set in 1808 after the French Revolution, but the play directed by Sade within the story takes place during the revolution, around 1793. The actors are the inmates of the asylum, and the nurses and supervisers occasionally step in to restore order. The bourgeois director of the hospital, Abbé de Coulmier also supervises the performance. He is a supporter of the post-revolutionary government in place at the time of the production, and believes the play he has organised to be an endorsement of his patriotic views. His patients, however, have other ideas, and they make a habit of speaking lines he had attempted to suppress, or deviating entirely into personal opinion. Suffice to say that they, as people who came out of the revolution no better than they went in, are not entirely pleased with the course of events as they fell.
The infamous Marquis de Sade, the man after whom sadism is named, did indeed direct performances in Charenton with an inmate there, encouraged by Coulmier. De Sade is a main character in the play, conducting many dialogues with Marat and observing the proceedings with sardonic amusement. He remains detached and cares little for practical politics and the inmates' talk of right and justice; he simply stands by as an observer and an advocate of his own nihilistic and individualist beliefs. One of the most powerful scenes of the play depicts him being whipped on his own instructions, and such bold scenes are not alone, nor confined to the predilections of the Marquis himself.
Technically, Marat/Sade is a musical. Richard Peaslee composed music for several songs for the original production with lyrics written by Adrian Mitchell (who also translated the text). Some of the songs were also recorded as a medley by Judy Collins on her album In My Life.
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