Marat/Sade

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, published in 1963, is a play by Peter Weiss, directed both on stage and screen by Peter Brook. The title is often shortened to Marat/Sade.

Incorporating dramatic elements characteristic of both Artaud and Brecht (a combination some find paradoxical) it is a bloody and unrelenting depiction of human struggle and suffering.

Set in a mental hospital, Marat/Sade is a 'play within a play'. The story is told post-revolution by inmates of the asylum, with nurses and orderlies supervising and occasionally stepping in to restore order. The bourgoise director of the hospital, Coulmier, also supervises the performance. He is a supporter of the post-revolutionary government in place at the time of the production, and believes the play he has organised to be an endorsement of his patriotic views. His patients, however, have other ideas, and they make a habit of speaking lines he had attempted to supress, or deviating entirely into personal opinion. Suffice to say that they, as people who came out of the revolution no better than they went in, are not entirely pleased with the course of events as they fell.

The infamous Marquis de Sade, the man after whom sadism is named, is a main character in the play, conducting many dialogues with Marat and observing the proceedings with sardonic amusement. He remains detached and cares little for practical politics and the inmates' talk of right and justice; he simply stands by as an observer and an advocate of his own nihilistic and individualist beliefs. One of the most powerful scenes of the play depicts him being whipped on his own instructions, and such bold scenes are not alone, nor confined to the predelications of the Marquis himself.

Marat/Sade is a thought-provoking work, discussing true and eternally relevant issues connected with the French Revolution – the plight of the poor, the futility of uprising, the intellectual justification of violence and, above all, the inherent weakness and fragility of the human individual.

Technically, Marat/Sade is a musical. Richard Peaslee composed music for several songs for the original production. Some of the songs were also recorded as a medley by Judy Collins on her album In My Life