The Revolutionists

I recently was asked to comment on a criticism of THE REVOLUTIONISTS and thought I'd share the answer with y'all here.

The question is: Why is Marianne an invented amalgamation of historical figures and the other White characters are fully fledged historical women with biographies? Why is Marianna fiction and the other women fact?

Great question. The short answer is that the historical Olympe De Gouges would not have known any San Dominguean / Haitian freedom fighters so she invents one (just as the play does). Olympe would and did known the real Marie Antionette, and Charlotte Corday's story was similarly well known to Olympe in Paris so those biogroaphies are easily accessed and readily utilized in Olympe's play.

The reveal at the end of the play, of course, is that the whole of it is a fiction made up by Olympe in her final moments alive before the guillotine. In those moments she creates relationships to comfort, interrogate, and inspire her and comes up with Marie, Charlotte and Marianne. The first two, as stated, were easy for her to make up based on the real people she knew well. But Marianne was created in Olympe's mind from what she did know: that the French were fighting a civil war for freedom while hypocritically colonizing and enslaving people on the island of San Domingue, those people who were rebelling for their freedom and lead by men and women of bravery and intelligence, those people were winning. To Olympe this is the ideal of liberation, coupled with a confrontation of a hipocrisy at the core of French Revolutionary leadership: they are calling their fight a fight for freedom, yet they violently enslave Black people oceans away and subjugate women all across France. This is why she invents Marianne (which is also the name of the iconic French symbol of freedom in Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix), as well as the radical activists Charlotte, and the problematic queen Marie.

Olympe is looking for answers, sisters, community, alliance, and like minded women as a way forward with disempowered people at the center of the story.

Thankfully we are starting to have much more scholarship on the critical and inspiring role Black women played in the Haitian Revolution. When writing Marianne's character I looked mostly to the little we know about Suzanne Simone Baptiste Louverture, wife of Toussaint Louverture.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

My work is an inquiry into social change as it relates to race. It interrogates the reality of white capitalist patriarchy, the value of black lives, as well as, celebrates the black and brown female body through a haunting photographic essay and paper sculptures styled to mimic garments worn by female European nobility between the 15th – 19th centuries.  As part of a developing master series of paper gown sculptures, the series speaks to the shocking treatment of Blacks throughout history and the trauma inflicted on their bodies as juxtaposed with the abstract idea of black freedom. Simultaneously, it engages with a vision of the future – one of hope, resilience, and justice.

The materials used for the paper gown sculptures are transformed in a way that allows me to represent layers of time and the events of the past as they intrude upon the present. Through the materials, I suggest that although we cannot change the past, we can act to change the present, as we activate the memories, visions, and legacies of our ancestors. Rewriting History seeks to reconnect viewers to the past so that parallels with current events are amplified.

Hi friends! Here’re some of my thoughts for making THE REVOLUTIONISTS the best production of this play it can be. I’ll add as I think of more but this get to some essentials. 

Vive la play! - Lauren

COMEDY -The comedy is fast. The characters do not know they're in a comedy. The stakes are too high to even wait for the punchline. Keep going until  we earn those beats and pauses. Wheeeeeee! STAKES- These are actual life and death stakes, which, ironically, makes it all the more funny. The stakes keep raising as the play goes on. The bad guys are ever closer, the guillotine is rising to the top and could fall any minute. OLYMPE - Olympe wants to be revolutionary but doesn't want the revolution. She is the absolute armchair activist. She wants to talk like a rebel poet, and get credit for the rebellion, but without getting in too much trouble, hurting her reputation, or messing with her career. She does not want to get bloody. She says she wants to change the world through art, but she really wants fame and praise. What she doesn't know until the end is that she wants sisters. She wants to be heard by them. She wants to be free of reputation or career and speak the truth of herself. That is the hardest thing for her to do and in the end, she does it with 3 women by her side. 

MARIANNE - Marianne is fueled by both family and justice. The stakes for her are personal (her husband, kids) as well as political (the slavery in her country). She does not have time to save the souls of these white women and is rather shocked when Marie is the one to most fully acknowledge her pain. She is a working mom: half in the worry of her heart, and half in the work for justice that only she can do. She truly loves her husband and his loss is a knife to the gut. But he was a feminist activist too, and she uses his love to enhance her power to keep the fight going. She’s funny too. She sings. 

MARIE - Marie is more like a sail in the wind, being pushed around as the weather changes. She is hilarious. We know the most about her because history has told us to laugh at her so we will. But her true drive in this play is almost entirely personal for her. She is aware of politics but does not feel impacted by them. She has been resilient until now, what could possibly change? But we see her most fully human with Marianne as they share the grief of two widows. When we see her click into her deepest rage is when, at her trail, they attack her children. In that moment we see her become a mother bear, we see what she really cares about: her kids. Suddenly all that is silly about her vanishes and we should see a mother, a woman.

CHARLOTTE - She is propelled by the absolute conviction of youth. She has no family or career to put on the line. She only has her rage at injustice, her apoplectic response to hypocrisy, and her undying commitment to the cause.  This cracks of course when she realizes that death is coming for her and coming fast. But she faces it like a true martyr without anything to lose but her life.

FEMINISM - The play is feminist and it should be intersectional. This is a universal story told in the hearts and bodies of women. They are not perfect, they are all flawed and struggling and tough. They are funny as hell and, in this play, that is one of the things that is most brave and badass: humor. 

THE SONG - A whisper of an anthem that comforts and haunts them. It needn't be accompanied by orchestration at all. Acapella is the most pure and simple. You can find the sheet music at Dramatists and a sample of the song here: https://tmblr.co/ZwRlZqyywAK0