Marat/Sade opens at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Fine Arts Studio Theater. The play within a play challenges audience members to think of the issues they face in a different way. Performances will run through Nov. 10 with a 2 p.m. matinee on Nov. 11.
Political unrest has the country in its grips and the citizens are in turmoil. The aristocracy has been overthrown and power is slowly being shifted to the people.
This could almost be a fitting description of what is happening in America today, but it is actually the backdrop of the play within the play being presented by the University of Wyoming theater department.
Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade will be played in the round beginning on Tuesday, Election Day, in the Fine Arts Studio Theater. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and performances will run through Nov. 10 with a 2 p.m. matinee on Nov. 11, Veteran’s day.
Marat/Sade takes place after the French Revolution. The Marquis de Sade, played by Chris Wolter, is in a mental institution. The story within the story takes place during the French Revolution in which Jean-Paul Marat and Charlotte Corday, played by Griffin Murphy and Kat Cordes, are the key characters.
Rebecca Hilliker directed Marat/Sade. “It’s meant to shock you out of your complacency make you look at something with fresh eyes,” she said.
It is a play about class struggle and human suffering, and how we as people deal with those issues, Hilliker said. No answers are offered, and in the end the cycle continues and violence begets violence.
Hanging on to the past is what keeps people from moving forward, Murphy’s character, Marat, says. It is a difficult line to draw between what people are willing to give up and what they need to do to make that move forward.
Basically, “in order to fight for one group of people to have all the rights they want, you have to put another group down,” Murphy said.
If the performers and the directors had one desire it would be that the audience come away from Marat/Sade with a different way of looking at the issues facing America. “If you have an open mind about what you’re seeing, then you are more likely to receive it. If you don’t have an open mind at all, it may upset you a little,” Cordes said.
“Even for those who don’t necessarily agree with the playwrights opinion, are going to be able to sit through it and say ‘that was a really interesting point of view’ and take it their own way and make their own conclusions about it,” Murphy said.
The play was written “to make the audience think about issues in a different way,” Wolter said. “This play definitely gives some alternatives.”
Marat/Sade is not a play for everyone. There are moments of violence as well as scenes of a sexual nature.
