Word: asylums
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...also a drama about events which took place 200 years ago driven by theories of theater half that age. One look at the show’s original 1963 title, “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,” should raise a flag: this is not a straightforward piece of writing...
This play is also known as “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.” We’re not sure what it’s about, but it supposedly involves “a sleepwalker with a knife, a firebrand ex-preacher, four gin-riddled singers, a sexual maniac with a wig, a schizoaffective historical re-enactor, a histrionic man in a bathtub, his mistress, and a Spanish guitar...
This violence is evident in the asylum as well, says Leaf. “A huge part of this play is the idea of violent demasking of violence and violence that’s made to look like help.” The brutality of the asylum’s overseers, which they claim is for the good of the inmates, mirrors the Parisian proletariat’s view of violence—epitomized by the guillotine and the storming of the Bastille—as a means to a better...
...These people are put in an insane asylum,” says Elyssa K. Jakim ’10, who plays Charlotte Corday. “They’re punished for what they are rather than what they’ve done.” For Leaf, this division between crimes of action and crimes of being lies at the heart of the production. “If you can truly understand the difference between them,” he says, “you can understand the play...
...understanding of “Marat/Sade,” therefore, relies on an appreciation of its complementary contexts. The production aims to use asylum and revolution to emphasize one another and comment on the present day. In doing so it hopes to show that violent desperation is timeless and that it can bring any of us—all of us—to the brink of insanity...