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Playwright's Dramaturgy

Notes & Links

In addition to this dramaturgy website I’ve created, the playwright of The Revolutionists herself has compiled a wonderful collection of images, links, videos, and more as her own dramaturgy! The link to her full dramaturgical blog can be found here, but some of the best resources can be found below!

How To Do The Play

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

POLITICS - Hell yes this is political. The play is about a moment in history where the rich and poor were lightyear’s apart in lifestyle, the country was in multiple wars, the debt was huge, the workers overtaxed, trust in the government was nil, the leaders were corrupt and greedy, racism, sexism, poverty, violence, extremism… The only difference between them and us is the year and the continent.

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