The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

The full title of Peter Weiss’ boundary breaking drama summarises the experiment very effectively: a play is being performed in the asylum of Charenton southeast of Paris. In front of an audience that is visiting specially for the occasion and under the supervision of the staff and the director of the institution, the patients present a bizarre true crime drama about the murder of Jean Paul Marat, the revolutionary who was stabbed in his own bathtub.

The director and author of this performance is the notorious master of debauchery and transgression the Marquis de Sade – a patient of the institution himself. And so, in this play within a play two champions of excess disillusioned with the French Revolution meet: the libertine Marquis debates with Marat, the advocate of terror, about the all-important question of whether change is at all possible. And if so, at what price? And by what means? The revolutionary spirit fizzled out long ago, sank into a delirium of bloodshed and has been stifled by the restoration. And it is the sick, the mentally damaged and those ostracised from society who turn the asylum into a stage and return to the key question of a failed utopia. A ritual game under the cover of supposed healing, attempting to transcend boundaries or gain insight – or both, or something else entirely.

Peter Weiss’ play, first performed in 1964, is a spectacle of transition, of changing times and of doubt – which is perhaps why it resonates quite so strikingly today – directed by Claudia Bossard, who will be making her debut at the Residenztheater with «Marat/Sade»