By Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Kate Clemons
Four beautiful, badass women lose their heads in this irreverent, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution’s infamous Reign of Terror. Hilarious, historical, heroic, and haunting, The Revolutionists is a rollicking ride through a Barbie-Movie-esque reverie/reality.
Award-winning playwright Lauren Gunderson bring us a witty, fast-paced dark comedy about art and activism, feminism and terrorism, and how we actually go about changing the world. We meet four forgotten women activists as they journey together through fear and self-doubt to empowerment, while dodging the guillotine with sparkling banter:
• Playwright/activist Olympe de Gouges, who uses her plays and pamphlets to promote abolition, women’s rights, feeding the hungry, and the fair treatment of illegitimate children.
• Assassin Charlotte Corday, who is bent on murdering the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, no matter the personal cost.
• Caribbean freedom fighter Marianne Angelle, who exposes the hypocrisy of the French Revolutionaries maintaining a slave colony while chanting “fraternité, egalité, fraternite.”
• And the one we think we know, Marie Antoinette, who asks at her final moment, “Do you see? Do you see this woman? Do you see. Me. Now?”