Acclaimed designer and renowned director Jaco Bouwer tackles one of the Baxter Theatre Centre’s flagship productions for 2017, Peter Weiss’s contemporary classic Marat/Sade.
Written by German playwright Weiss in 1963, the full title of the play is The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, which has been shortened to, and is widely known as, Marat/Sade.
It’s being staged nightly at 7:30 at the Baxter Flipside till Saturday March 25.
The ensemble of 16 actors is led by Mncedisi Shabangu as the Marquis de Sade, Charlton George as Jean-Paul Marat and Tinarie van Wyk Loots as Charlotte Corday.
MARAT / SADE
[23 Feb – 25 Mar]
Book at Computicket. pic.twitter.com/TTJE2rZCW8— Baxter Theatre (@BaxterTheatre) February 17, 2017
MARAT / SADE
[23 Feb – 25 Mar]
Book at Computicket pic.twitter.com/iQyvfW8uBN— Baxter Theatre (@BaxterTheatre) February 16, 2017
The story unfolds like a “play within a play” and is set in an asylum in 1808. The Marquis de Sade decides to stage a play about the murder of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday and uses his fellow inmates as the actors.
The performance is supervised by the director of the hospital, Monsieur Coulmier who unashamedly supports Napoleon’s government and firmly believes that the play will support his own bourgeois ideas and denounce those of the French Revolution that Marat helped to lead.
However, the patients continue to speak their own words, which clash with those which Coulmier wishes to promote.
The Marquis continues to manipulate the situation in his favour, resulting into an orgy of chaos and destruction.
Original music for the production is composed by Pierre-Henri Wicomb, costume design by Birrie le Roux, lighting design by Patrick Curtis and choreography by Grant van Ster.
Adapted from press release
