Emma Frank
Staff Writer
Pandemonium is the highlight of the department of theater and dance’s production of Marat/Sade. The audience was treated to a wild recounting of the final days of Marat, a diseased French revolutionary. During the play, Jean-Paul Marat is accused of not following through with the radical promises he made to the French people. The cast and crew’s creation embodies the chaos, emotion and passion that characterized the aftermath of the French Revolution.
The audiences of their three shows last week were treated to a large dose of organized chaos. The actors’ wild methods and the crew’s use of technology added to the madness. Every actor in the cast took on intricate characters and developed a unique personality for each one.
The play revolves around patients at a youth development center where supervisors are using theatre as an experimental type of therapy. Each actor portrayed both a patient and that patient’s role in the therapeutic production. When asked how the actors prepared for this challenge, Aviva Helena Neff ’14 said, “we did a lot of ensemble activities in which we explored the limitations of our characters and our interactions with others. We also attended ‘group therapy’ in character. It was truly a different approach. I think it worked well.”
It seemed to work extremely well for Gareth McNamara ’14, who wooed the audience with his guitar playing, educating them with his monologues and captivating their attention with his passion. All the actors were stationed around the theater, loudly whispering rude comments about the characters. I was treated to the hilariously snide remarks of Shakera Blackmon ’14. Although all the noise and additional comments were at times distracting, they offered additional support when trying to follow the show’s somewhat complex train of thought.
The actors made excellent use of the Schoolroy Black Box Theater by imposing themselves into the audiences’ personal space and climbing above their heads into the scaffolding. In addition to the constant movement of the actors, crew members were armed with cameras to capture any action that could be hard to see. The footage ranged from audience reactions to offstage scenes, all projected live onto a large screen above the stage. This was useful in the off-chance your seat wasn’t located in front of the exploits, but was also an easy way to become distracted.
However, no matter how many times certain elements could be seen as distracting, everything came together to illustrate the mayhem of post-revolution France and the mayhem of a person’s mind. Going to see Marat/Sade was a completely enjoyable experience that I am excited to see again next weekend. Performances will be at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 3, 4 and 5.