The Revolutionists

The Revolutionists Trailer
Theatre Horizon Uniberp takes in a little culture:

I saw a play last night "The Revolutionists", which to me was kind of an odd thing, a sort of high-spirited telling of a playwright Olympe de Gouges during the French Revolution along with Charlotte Cordray, the woman who killed Marat and who was herself put to death, coupled with a comic turn on Marie Antoinette. The audience ate it up, as they were supposed to, but I was not that strong on my history and I had to sit somewhat aghast at the whole thing, How is it that people can put horrors like that, however necessary they may be, at arms length?

Maybe mine was the intended reaction and all those chucklers went home and read the history after.

Okay, Robespierre and Marie Antoinette are the only people I recall from the French Revolution. There was a King, Louis, I think, but I can't tell you what number he was. 14th? 15th? 16th? Something like that. Marat sort of rings a bell, but Olympe de Gouges and Charlotte Cordray are new to me.

Lauren Gunderson, the playrite, has a page with this blurb:

The Revolutionists is a new play about four very real women who lived boldly in France during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. 

Playwright Olympe De Gouge, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen (and fan of ribbons) Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle hang out, murder Marat, loose their heads and try to beat back the extremist insanity in the Paris of 1793. What was a hopeful revolution for the people is now sinking into hyper violent hypocritical male rhetoric. However will modern audiences relate. 

This grand and dream-tweaked comedy is about violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world.  

It’s a true story. 


Or total fiction. 


Or a play about a play. 


Or a raucous resurrection. . .


that ends in a song and a scaffold.