The Revolutionists playbill

the Revolutionists MAR 15 – APR 7, 2019 by

LAUREN GUNDERSON directed by

LENNIE DEAN scenic design

CONOR WOODS lighting design

APRIL GEORGE

sound design

D O U G FA XO N costume design

K AT E G R A H A M

production stage manager

B E U L A H V E GA

The Revolutionists is presented by arrangement with Dramatists Play Service.

Run time 2 hours, with a 15-minute intermission The taking of photographs and the recording of this performance are strictly prohibited.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR LENNIE DEAN received an MFA in Acting from Temple University and has been part of the Sonoma County theater scene for 40 years. Currently she is the Interim Director of Education at 6th Street Playhouse where she teaches adult acting classes, manages a staff of eight teaching artists and develops theater education programs for ages four through adults.

Her skills, talents, and passion have led her to teach, direct, act, produce, and work as a dramaturge in several theater companies and schools in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. At 6th Street she co-created and directed The Tennessee Menagerie. Here she has also directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Happy, Silent Sky, The Children’s Hour and last year’s highly acclaimed Equus. Lennie received the 1998 Independent Eye Award for Outstanding Contributions to Theatre in Sonoma County. Working on Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists, with the dream team of a stage manager, dramaturge, costume designer, make-up artist, sound designer, lighting designer, set designer and a cast of four badass women from heaven has been thoroughly heartening and pure joy!

WHAT IS ‘META THEATRE’?

by Lea Herman, Dramaturge “Metatheater. In the end, the entire play is in Olympe’s mind…”

According to its full title, The Revolutionists is “A Comedy. A Quartet. A Revolutionary Dream Fugue.“ The drama unfolds on at least three different fictional levels corresponding with each other. That sounds way too complicated to be entertaining. Or does it?

First, the plot is simple: Olympe de Gouges is writing a play about the French Revolution with herself, Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday and Marianne as protagonists. On a second level, we are watching a play about these four women during the Revolution. On a third level, the plot unrolls in retrospect. Lauren Gunderson writes: “In the end, the entire play is in Olympe’s mind as she walks up the stairs, onto the scaffold, and to her death.“ The actual drama is an inner monologue of Olympe coming to terms with her own execution, and the four protagonists only meet in the interior world of their writer’s imagination.

That makes it metatheater—a form of theater that exposes and comments on its narrative strategies instead of disguising them. The protagonists challenge the fourth wall and are aware that they are characters in a play. They are not trying to hide it or to take themselves too seriously. On the contrary, they play around with all kinds of different theater styles.

The characters come to represent different archetypes of womanhood. Marie, the queen, demonstrates strength, grace and countenance in the face of the ultimate catastrophe of losing her identity, her social status, her family, her life. Corday, the angel of assassins, is a righteous girl determined to act for a cause greater than herself. Marianne, a single mother and practical activist,fights for freedom beyond race and gender with the wisdom of the heart. Finally, Olympe, the writer, struggles to get out of her head and onto paper what is really important to her, because she knows how words create truth.

That is where the true story lies: in the search for a voice that succeeds at moving and empowering the minds, hearts and spirits of her listeners without being sentimental. A voice that matters politically, emotionally, and historically. A voice that still speaks of true freedom for all, regardless of our various backgrounds, in the reality of the 21st century. And lastly, a voice that refuses to be forgotten.

THE CAST Olympe de Gouges................ Tara Howley Hudson* Marie Antoinette................................. Lydia Revelos

Charlotte Corday............ Chandler Parrott-Thomas Marianne Angelle...................... Serena Elize Flores

TARA HOWLEY HUDSON* (Olympe de Gouges) lived in Paris several revolutions ago and worked in the fashion industry, while spending all her free time seeing plays at the ComedieFrancaise and the Theatre de Soleil. Inspired, she made her way back to the States where she has enjoyed working in LA, NYC, and San Francisco doing regional, experimental, improvisational and street theatre. Favorite experiences include: Equus at 6th Street Playhouse (Awarded Best Ensemble by MTJA!), Moliere’s Scapin at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, Irena in Chekov’s Three Sisters, and workshopping an experimental three-actor version of MacBeth at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She also has acted in independent films, tv, and commercials.

“There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”– Marie A. CHANDLER PARROTTTHOMAS (Charlotte Corday) is thrilled to be back in the Studio theater (since performing in Equus last season) with such an empowering group of women. She returned to Santa Rosa after completing the BFA program at Southern Oregon U. where she interned at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival during the 2017 season, understudying several shows.

Chandler has been keeping herself busy performing in shows around the area (some favorites include Moon Over Buffalo at 6th St and Hand to God at Left Edge Theater).

Catch Chandler in the upcoming Left Edge show This Random World!

LYDIA REVELOS (Marie Antoinette) loves this play, this role and most of all, this phenomenal group that has gathered to tell this singular story and hidden history finally told (fun research too!). She is grateful to be back at 6th Street following roles in Annie, Stage Kiss & Animal Crackers. Last year she appeared in Spreckels’ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Left Edge Theater’s Honky & Raven Players’ Rapture, Blister, Burn. Other recent favorites include Main Stage West’s From Both Hips, Spreckels’ The Sugar Bean Sisters & Roustabout Ensemble’s Betrayal. A native of southwest Ohio, she holds a BFA from Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College.

SERENA ELIZE FLORES (Marianne Angelle) has been honored to perform on many Bay Area stages in the past four years after taking a long hiatus from theatre to attend graduate school. Favorite roles include Morticia (The Addams Family), Rita (The Naked Truth–US premiere), Yaz (Water by the Spoonful), Columbia (The Rocky Horror Show), Jenny Diver (The Threepenny Opera), Rosie (Bye Bye Birdie), Mathilde (The Clean House), The Witch (Big Fish), Anita (West Side Story), Lucy (You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown), Chiffon (Little Shop of Horrors), Nickie (Sweet Charity), and Francine/Lena (Clybourne Park–TBA Best Actress nom/ Best Ensemble win).

*The Actor appears through the courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

This Theatre operates under an agreement with Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

PRODUCTION STAFF Stage Director........................................ Lennie Dean Production Stage Manager/ Properties Designer............................... Beulah Vega Movement Choreography.................. Rachel Wynne Fight Choreography............................. Marty Pistone

Scenic Designer/Technical Director..... Conor Woods Lighting Designer................................... April George Costume Designer................................. Kate Graham Sound Designer....................................... Doug Faxon Dramaturge............................................. Lea Herman

SPECIAL THANKS: David Beckman, Dawn Long, Rachel Wynne, Marty Pistone, Serena Gomez, Kate Graham, Lea Herman and Stacey Kerr.

LAUREN GUNDERSON is a prolific playwright, screenwriter and short story author originally from Atlanta, Georgia. She was announced the most-produced living playwright in the United States in both 2016 and 2017 by American Theatre Magazine. Awards include the 2016 Lanford Wilson Award from the Dramatist Guild, the 2016 Otis Guernsey Award for Emerging Writer, and the prestigious 2014 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at companies across the United States including South Coast Rep, The Kennedy Center, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The O’Neill, The Denver Center, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, and more. In 2018, she created a national campaign of theater activism with royalty-free readings of her play Natural Shocks to address domestic and gun violence against women.

WHO’S WHO in The Revolutionists: Characters in History OLYMPE DE GOUGES (1748-1793), born Marie Gouze, was a writer and political activist. Married at 16 to a man she did not love, she became a mother and a widow at 17. She then moved to Paris, lived in a romantic relationship without marrying again, and started her own theater company. Her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen pointed out that the revolutionary concept of equality did not include women or people of color. Politically favoring the concept of a constitutional monarchy based on human rights, she harshly criticized the Reign of Terror. She was beheaded November 3, 1793.

MARIE ANTOINETTE (1755-1793) was born Archduchess of Austria and married to the Dauphin at age 14. Disliked by the people, she was held solely responsible for the state bankruptcy due to her lavish spending on fashion, theater and music. She was known as Madame Déficit, L’Autruche (the ostrich) and as L’Autrichienne (the Austrian bitch). 1792, the royal family were imprisoned and the monarchy abolished. One year later Marie Antoinette was accused of high treason and executed.

MARIE-ANNE CHARLOTTE DE CORDAY D’ARMONT (1768-1793) wrote history by stabbing the Jacobin leader and journalist Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, hoping that his death would end the Reign of Terror and prevent a civil war. In July 1793 she came to Paris, took a hotel room, bought a 6-inch long kitchen knife and wrote her Address to the French people, friends of Law and Peace.

Three days later, she executed her plan. After her execution, a man in the crowd jumped up onto the scaffold and slapped her severed head, which, as the anecdote goes, was still conscious and reacted with a facial expression of surprise and indignation.

MARIANNE ANGELLE is the only purely fictional character in the play, but she is based on two historical references - La Marianne and the Haitian Revolution. La Marianne is the female allegory of the French Republic and its founding principles liberté, égalité, & fraternité. Secondly, in 1791 the Caribbean colony of Sainte-Domingue initiated the first successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial revolution, ending in 1804 with the abolition of slavery on the island and the founding of the independent Republic of Haiti. Marianne, the only character in the play who lives, points towards a future left to attain: a state in which freedom for all “is possible, regardless of race, gender and social status.