Marat/Sade
Comprehensive Examination
Reading List
Ryan Thomas Barnhart
Department of Cultural
Analysis and Theory
Stony Brook University
SUNY
Robert Harvey, Adviser
August 2013
Place on List:
III. Period: 1960 - 2009
4. Primary
Texts: Drama
Peter
Weiss.
Marat/Sade.
(1963)
Key Terms (tags): Theatre of Cruelty,
Supporting References:
- History and Cruelty in Peter Weiss's "Marat/Sade"
John J. White
The Modern
Language Review , Vol. 63, No. 2 (Apr., 1968), pp. 437-448
Published by:
Modern
Humanities Research Association
Article Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3723254
- "Marat/Sade." . : , 2005-01-01. Oxford Reference. 2006-01-01. Date Accessed 2 Sep. 2013
AT: 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 A:
Peter Weiss Pf: 1964, Berlin Pb: 1964 Tr: 1965
G: Hist. drama in 2 acts; German verse and songs S:
Bathhouse of the Charenton Asylum, France, 1808 C: 15m, 7f,
extrasThe Director of the Charenton Asylum welcomes his audience of
Parisian bourgeoisie to the play being presented by one of the
inmates, the Marquis de Sade. The Herald introduces the main
characters: Jean-Paul Marat, leader of the French Revolution, whose
skin condition forces him to spend much of his life in the bath,
played by a paranoiac; the idealistic Charlotte Corday, played by a
narcoleptic; and her lover Duperret, played by an erotomaniac. It is
1793, and the Revolution has still not brought the promised
prosperity to the poor. A rebellious priest, Jacques Roux, incites
the patients to revolt and has to be violently suppressed. Corday,
persuaded that Marat must be killed to end the bloodbath of the
Terror, comes to his door but is reminded by Sade that she has to
come three times before gaining admittance. After a re-enactment of
guillotinings, Sade and Marat conduct a debate, Marat still believing
that change can be achieved only through political revolution, Sade
insisting that meaning can only be found within the individual. He
emphasizes this by getting Corday to whip him, while he talks about
the Revolution, which has led only to a dull uniformity. Despite
Duperret's efforts to detain her, Corday goes to Marat a second time,
again being turned away. Marat in a delirium sees his parents,
schoolmaster, Voltaire, and Lavoisier, all of whom cruelly denounce
him. After the interval, Marat addresses the National Assembly, and
the Director protests at Marat's attacks on authority. Corday visits
Marat a third time, and just as she is poised to stab him, the Herald
interrupts to recount the course of the Revolution: how Napoleon has
come to power and led the French into one war after another. Corday
delivers her final blow, and the patients continue to chant and march
on, while Roux tries to stop them. The patients lose all control,
while Sade laughs triumphantly, and they have to be suppressed
violently.
AT: 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 A:
Peter Weiss Pf: 1964, Berlin Pb: 1964 Tr: 1965
G: Hist. drama in 2 acts; German verse and songs S:
Bathhouse of the Charenton Asylum, France, 1808 C: 15m, 7f,
extras
This stunningly theatrical and complex
play is arguably the best play in German since Brecht. On one level
it deals with the historical fact: Marat's death in the bath,
immortalized in David's picture, and Sade's theatricals at Charenton.
On another, it opposes the revolutionary ideals of Marat to the
cynical individualism of Sade. On yet another, it confronts a
contemporary audience with their own complacency about supposed
progress. In terms of presentation, it contains many of the elements
of Brecht's epic theatre (episodic scenes, awareness that we are
watching a play) with Artaudian ‘theatre of cruelty’ (scenes of
violence, deafening music, anarchy that threatens to spill out into
the audience). While the Berlin premiere was quite Brechtian,
focusing on the philosophical debate, Peter Brook's spectacular 1964
production placed the emphasis on the mental asylum setting.
- "Weiss, Peter." The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance. : Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference. 2010. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013
The following references the writer
and not the text specifically.
“Weiss, Peter (1916–82) German writer. Weiss left Nazi Germany
with his parents in 1934. He initially pursued a career in painting,
began publishing in 1946, and moved to avant-garde
film during the 1950s. After 1960 he became known in Germany for his
fiction and his puppet
play Night with Guests (1963), then achieved international
recognition with 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 (1964). Reflecting Weiss's
own political concerns, Marat/Sade sets Marat's arguments
for political revolution, however bloody, against Sade's endorsement
of extreme individual liberation. Inspired by *Artaud's
theatre of cruelty
and using songs drawn from *Brecht's
epic
theatre, the work was immediately recognized for its power, thanks in
part to the international success of *Brook's
Artaudian production (Royal
Shakespeare Company, 1964). Weiss himself
preferred the more soberly epic East German première, which favoured
Marat over Sade.
The Investigation (1965) used
transcripts from the 1964 West German investigation into war crimes
at Auschwitz to show how the death camp's organization embodied
values central to post-war capitalism. An important contribution to
documentary
theatre, it premièred in West Berlin, directed by *Piscator,
and simultaneously at thirteen other East and West German theatres.
Song of the Lusitanian Bogey (1967) and the documentary
Vietnam Discourse (1968) were informed by Weiss's
increasing commitment to Marxism. Weiss explored the role of the
revolutionary writer in Trotsky in Exile (1970) and
political liberation and artistic vision in Hölderlin
(1971). During the 1970s he devoted his energies to a massive
three-part novel, Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975–81). He
finished one more play before his death, The New Investigation
(1981).”
- a
- "Cruelty, Theatre of." The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance. : Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference. 2010. Date Accessed 2 Sep. 2013
“Cruelty,
Theatre of. Enterprise launched in Paris in 1935 by *Artaud,
with his adaptation of Shelley's The Cenci. The production
was the practical culmination of Artaud's long-held plan to
revolutionize European theatre by challenging the dominant form of
psychological realism.
Adverse critical response and financial difficulties curtailed the
run of The Cenci to seventeen performances and marked
Artaud's last practical experiment with theatre. The title derives
from a heretical Gnostic belief that the very essence of life
(creation and the struggle to survive) is ‘cruel’ and beyond
redemption. This philosophy acted as an analogy for theatrical
creation which, Artaud believed, should not be used to narrate or
present cruelty but actually to transmit it. The psychophysiological
effects of such traumas, rather than the blood, gore, and violence
associated with them, were the goals of Artaud's short-lived theatre.
‘Cruelty’ thus translated into theatrical production centred on
the dramatization of moral and social crimes (such as murder, rape,
and incest), which were the overriding themes of the first
production. The notion was expounded in Artaud's celebrated
manifesto, The Theatre and its Double (1938). Although he
never succeeded in successfully realizing the theatre of cruelty
himself, the idea acted as a touchstone for a post-war generation of
practitioners seeking to revolutionize theatre in a post-totalitarian
Europe, in an even more cruel world after the Holocaust. A Theatre of
Cruelty season was held in London in 1964 under the aegis of the
Royal
Shakespeare Company, directed by *Brook
and *Marowitz.
It featured sketches, scenes, improvisations,
a performance of Artaud's playlet The Spurt of Blood, and,
most importantly, Brook's mounting of *Weiss's
Marat/Sade. That production and its film version (1966),
coupled with the growing influence of Artaud's theories in the next
decades, greatly affected avant-garde
performance worldwide and made the term ‘theatre of cruelty’
widely current.”
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