Set in the Asylum of Charenton, Peter Weiss's play shows inmates of the mental facility re-enacting the last days of political agitator Jean Paul Marat's life fifteen years earlier. The play within the play has been written and directed by the Marquis de Sade, a fellow inmate at the asylum. In the lead up to Marat’s brutal murder in his bathtub at the hands of Charlotte Corday, Sade takes his audience on an examination of power, social hierarchy, suffering, and human nature. As such, Sade not only runs the play but uses it as a means to instruct society at large. Peter Brooks’ notorious staging of the play in 1964 sent shockwaves through British theatre and Marat/Sade remains as innovative, controversial, and thought-provoking today.
Marat/Sade guide sections
