Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat, represented by the spectacle of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade - today usually abbreviated to Marat / Sade - is a drama in two acts first performed in 1964 by Peter Weiss. The internationally successful play was in 1966 awarded the American Theater and Musical Award Tony Award as "Best play".
- 5.1 Text Output
- 5.2 Radio Plays
- 5.3 Media
- 5.4 adaptation
- 6.1 secondary literature
- 6.2 non-fiction to the historical background of the dramatic plot
Description of the work
Content and Figurenantithetik
At the center of the drama to the French Revolution, the two central characters Marat and de Sade and their conflicting worldviews with the associated state designs. While Marat of the Company for the benefit of all, as he believes, wants to impose morality and virtue, the people represents and the revolution - bloody as it has long been - justifies resignation de Sade, given the alleged nature of man, ridiculed Marat socialist ideas and sees salvation in the detachment of the individual from society.
Composite Structure
The plot is distorted and characterized by grotesque and absurd elements. It is, as the title suggests, the assassination of Marat's just a play within a play that is rehearsed by the drama group of a lunatic asylum under numerous disorders and brought to the stage under the direction of the Marquis de Sade housed there. The piece includes two, actually even three times and levels of action: one is the time of the French Revolution, in the 13th July 1793 Marat spent the last hours of his life to help alleviate a skin disease in the bathtub, working until he his murderess Charlotte Corday receives. The last hours of Marat is on the other level of action against the Napoleonic period in which de Sade, the stage play with his, err ' actors in front of a middle-class audience - on this occasion patronizing guest in the madhouse - staged. The third time level, finally, the presence of the real audience of the piece is also made aware of and illustrated by insets in the dramatic plot. So the plot is constantly changing between these planes back and forth. In this way, the spectacle, and the spectacle are " unmasked " in the theater and to the viewers, compassionate 'to' most imaginative ' are made.
Verse
The language of the play is highly stylized and blank verse, but also - characterized by doggerel, which in addition the artificiality and theatricality of the play are emphasized and so are other moments of absurdity into play - depending on the speaker and topic.
Historical Background
The piece is based notwithstanding the dramatic imagination, with the white goes to work, at least in part on historical facts. In addition to the factual circumstances of the assassination of Marat is one particular stage for the Asylum of Charenton ', now Saint- Maurice ( Val -de- Marne). In the Hospice de Sade was - after many years in prison - locked up in the last years of his life (1803-1814), as his contemporaries feared that he would endanger the public morals. The theater of smaller pieces de Sade of the Napoleonic period before a bourgeois audience quite correspond to reality.
Biographical work classification
Weiss's play contains ambiguities, which are reflected particularly in the constellation of characters between Marat and de Sade. The dichotomous dramaturgy of the piece reflects Weiss' open political positioning resist during the time of origin of the text. On one side of the skeptics de Sade, who does not believe in revolutionary change and this skepticism sees demonstrated in the violent riots after the French Revolution, and on the other side of the socialist -minded Marat, who wants to take advantage of the political unrest for its own purposes and, as believes in the power of the Fourth Estate. After 1965, White found his political response to the injustice of the present under socialism. This decision indicated at the end of the piece as a hidden message to held, which is suggested by Roux: " When will you learn to see her / When will you finally understand ."
Reception
The piece was premiered on April 29, 1964 Schiller Theatre in Berlin " under vehement applause and scattered boos ". Directed by Konrad Swinarski, the incidental music was by Hans -Martin Majewski. Marat / Sade experienced since then a wealth of worldwide productions. " Nearly a hundred has to register 1964-1976, of West Berlin to Rostock and Stockholm, London to Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Sydney, Castrop -Rauxel to Kingston / Jamaica. "
Marat / Sade in 1966 awarded the U.S. theatrical and musical Tony Award Award for the "best play". In 1967, it was made into a film directed by Peter Brook with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The main roles occurred Patrick Magee as the Marquis de Sade, Ian Richardson as Jean -Paul Marat and Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday.
Director Bernhard Rübenach developed in 1969 for the Bavarian Radio and the Südwestfunk a 115 -minute radio play version. Rehearsals with a production of Marat / Sade were also the subject of Andres Veiel ZDF documentary Winter Night's Dream in 1992.
Expenditure
Text output
- Peter Weiss: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat. Drama in two acts. With a commentary by Arnd Beise. Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp, 2004 ( Suhrkamp base library, 49). ISBN 3-518-18849-6
Radio plays
- Peter Weiss: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat, represented by the spectacle of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. SFB / NDR, 1964 ( 75 min.) Director: Konrad Swinarski ( excerpts from the premiere staging).
- Peter Weiss: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat, represented by the spectacle of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. . GDR 1965 Director: Hanns- Anselm perts.
- Peter Weiss: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat, represented by the spectacle of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. BR / SWF 1969 (115 min.) Director: Bernhard Rübenach.
Media
- Peter Weiss: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat represented by the spectacle of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Performance of the theater Rostock, directed by Hanns Anselm perts. For the record edited by Hanns Anselm perts. Berlin: VEB German records Berlin, 1966 ( LITERA 8 60 100 /101) ( = Hamburg: German Grammophon, Literary Archive, No. 44 026 /27, nd).