Research Investigation
How would a director interpret the twentieth scene of Peter Weiss’ The Marat/Sade ‘Monsieur de Sade is whipped’ in the style of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed?
Word Count: 1521 (Excluding quotes and citations)

James Hilditch
Standard Level Theatre
2/5/13

In 1950s and 1960s Brazilian Augusto Boal developed a new brand of political theatre designed to liberate the oppressed people of the world. Boal was angered by the theatre’s, “top-to-bottom process: the writer delivering the sermon to otherwise ignorant spectators who therefore remained passive receptacles of somebody else’s view of the world” and looked to flip the paradigm through his “Theatre of the Oppressed”. The underlying concept of Theatre of the Oppressed is that “we can amend, adjust and alter our actions to have different impact and to change our world” . Boal felt that, “The spectators in the people’s theatre cannot go on being passive victims” and his workshops became a “practice revolution”. He encouraged his audiences present images of oppression, discuss how the issue would be solved, and then enact a “rebellion”. In most cases Boal used workshops to convey his message, as a result a director interpreting the Marat/Sade would act as a facilitator in encouraging the “spect-actors” , 3 to construct images of oppression and finally overcome it. Figure 1 A picture of the Theatre of Oppressed at work; presented in-the-round.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, or The Marat/Sade was written in 1963 by Peter Weiss. It is a play within a play in which the director, Marquis de Sade, presents a reenactment of the assassination of French Revolutionary activist Jean-Paul Marat in1793 to asylum inmates. Set in 1808, the play attacks many of the broken promises of the revolution, “Sade: And now Marat/ I see where/ this revolution is leading/to the withering of the individual man” . Coulmier, the director of the asylum, becomes a symbol of oppression and is likened to the tyrannical Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte as indicated by the character descriptions, “He likes to adopt a Napoleonic pose”4. The twentieth scene consists of Sade, the director, being whipped by Charlotte Corday, Marat’s assassin, while recalling what the revolution had once promised. While a director cannot interpret Weiss’ original scene directly in the spirit of Theatre of the Oppressed, it could be structured as a workshop by which the themes of oppression are still discussed. The crude image of a man’s aspirations being crushed and sucked out of him by an act of repression is cannon fodder for revolutionary spirit. Through a workshop in the flair of theatre of the Oppressed the ensemble members can be encouraged to take action against forces of oppression in their own life, the twentieth scene of The Marat/Sade being merely a metaphor for all man’s suffering at the hands of others. As such, when constructing a workshop on Peter Weiss’ The Marat/Sade, the facilitator needs to account for: warm up exercises, a system by which the audience can easily intervene in the action, and a format that fits the ensemble’s revolution. Figure 2 Peter Weiss was born in Berlin, 1916 and having fled the Nazis in 1940 lived in Paris and Stockholm where he developed leftist ideas.
Boal explains that it is important for a spect-actor to know his/her body. He suggests, “a series of exercises by which one gets to know one’s body, its limitations and possibilities, its social distortions and possibilities for rehabilitation”3. Our muscular structure becomes accustomed to our daily routine and social paradigms. A typist has a different muscular structure than a miner, etc. In order to break this, the facilitator must invite his ensemble to take part in a number of warm up exercise in including a slow motion race, cross-legged race, monster race wheel race, hypnosis, boxing match, out west, and 193 others that Boal outlines. A monster race will be particularly helpful to the ensemble as they will learn to move with each other as one creature, “each person embraces the thorax of his mate but in reverse position, so that the legs of one fit round the neck of the other”3. The significance of this in The Marat/Sade is that the patients can be portrayed as an ominous creature waiting to strike (Coulmier or any other oppressive figure head) through their movement as one being. The oppressed cannot rise up by themselves as Aesop said, “United we stand, divided we fall”. Another technique that Boal suggests for making the body of the spect-actor more expressive is through the director asking the ensemble to physically represent animals given to them on a piece of paper. They then, without language, find their “mate”. In the context of The Marat/Sade, facilitator would allow the ensemble to be expressive. The twentieth scene is very bestial and a director could enhance it through these exercises. The warm-up exercise don’t directly influence the shape of the workshop but put the ensemble members in an appropriate state of mind before acting out scenes of oppression and coercion.
In a workshop on The Marat/Sade, the theme of rising up against an oppressive leader is pivotal because while Weiss’ play may not be, the theme and metaphoric situation is applicable. The director/facilitator needs to create a suitable scenario for an act of oppression to occur. Boal outlined three degrees, simultaneous dramaturgy, image theatre, and forum theatre through which the audience members can directly involve themselves and alter the events3. In simultaneous dramaturgy a story involving oppression is developed by actors to the climax; at this point the issue is open to discussion and the audience members create their own ending which the performers act out accordingly , “The spectators “write” simultaneously with the acting of the actors”3. The image of Charlotte Corday flagellating Sade can be interpreted as a horrifically oppressive gesture to destroy his revolutionary spirit. The audience would be allowed to discuss the possible solution(s) to such a scene. Having discussed them they can suggest an ending, for example Corday decides not to whip Sade and turns the whip on herself. The seed of revolution is implemented in the mind of the oppressed and they have already begun to scheme their own revolution.

Figure 3 above is the scene in which Sade is whipped by Charlotte Corday. An alternative scene, a result of simultaneous dramaturgy, could see Corday stop herself and turn the whip on herself, or better yet, Coulmier
The second degree formulated by Boal was Image Theatre. “He (spectator) is asked to express his views on a certain theme of common interest that the participants wish to discuss”3 then he/she constructs a tableau to represents the theme, in the case of The Marat/Sade, scene twenty the scene will be frozen in its most oppressive moment and the ensemble members will then discuss how they desire the scene to look, and the tableau is reconstructed accordingly. The facilitator then asks the “sculptors” how the ideal scenario will be reached. Perhaps Marat stands up and throws the whip away, or Corday stops whipping Sade and asks for peace. Whatever the case, the audience has just taken part in plotting a revolution. They now know how they can bring about change because they have already started constructing it and seen it with their own eyes. Boal has described theatre as “therapeutic”, “It allows people to go and try, and to try again a third and a fourth time - and this is extremely therapeutic” and through practicing their rebellion they have constructed images on stage and the act of expressing their revolutionary leanings is relaxing or therapeutic.
The third and final degree is Forum Theatre. It emerged and improved upon the previous two requiring that, “the participant has to intervene decisively in the dramatic action and change it.”3 Here a scene (the twentieth scene of The Marat/Sade) would be performed to the spectators. At the end of the skit, the audience may disagree with the outcome, perhaps they didn’t like the pain Sade experienced, or maybe they want him to endure more, etc. and the scene is reacted. The second time it is performed the audience are allowed to intervene in the action at any time to alter the outcome by replacing one of the characters on stage . As the facilitator of the workshop, forum theatre is the best system for inviting the ensemble members to intervene. It presents a real situation and allows them to change; they are not only planning a revolution they are instigating it.
There are a number of ways of formatting forum theatre from newspaper, trial, and myth theatre to Invisible and Photo-Romantic Theatre they all offer a different backdrop for the scene. The styles are part of the “theatre of discourse”, and are “simple forms in which the spectator-actor creates “spectacles" according to his need to discuss certain themes or rehearse certain actions”3. For invisible theatre, “it consists of the presentation of a scene in an environment other than the theatre, before people who are not spectators.”3 In this sense, a scene of punishment (whipping) could occur in public and the people in the nearby vicinity are the “audience”. Their interaction with the scene will promote a call for change and liberation of the oppressed. As a director, however, invisible theatre is less practical. On the other hand, what Boal describes as “Breaking of Repression” is a process by which one member tells a story of oppression to the other member that is a mutual problem. The person at the centre of the story must then break the repression by taking significant action to stop it. In the context of The Marat/Sade, the acting of repression is the whipping of Sade, a symbol of political change and revolution. His pain is a catalyst for people to intervene and change the course of the scene. Through breaking the repression the ensemble metaphorically break their psychological oppression. Having done so the person has rehearsed a form of revolution and on some level a political revolt,
“theatre is politics above all - politics in the sense that whatever we do here, is not to stay here. Whatever we do here, we will go out and do in real life. Whatever we learn here is to be extrapolated. To be a citizen is to change society. To be a citizen is to help make society better. The Theatre of the oppressed can help with this.”13
The final stage of transforming the twentieth scene of The Marat/Sade into a workshop in the spirit of Theatre of the Oppressed is to establish a Joker, “A joker, a real joker, is a person who can help the people write a play, help people do the blocking of the play, help the people with the music, with the text, with everything.”13 Invariably the director is the natural Joker and is therefore the instigator of the whole piece. The beauty of Theatre of the Oppressed is that little to no setting, lighting, etc. is needed and the director is purely a facilitator is allowing the workshop to develop to a stage where ensemble members are comfortable and willing to discuss their ideas for overthrowing means of oppression. The scene is a powerful representation of coercion towards advocates of freedom, what the French Revolution once stood for. However, in the asylum the nurses are oppressed, the director is oppressed, and the patients are oppressed, it begs the question as to whether the patients are actually mad or if they just have different ideas. Through interpreting the twentieth scene of The Marat/Sade in the style of Theatre of the Oppressed the director is able to harness a group’s resentment for oppression and direct it at the source, Coulmier, political and social persecution.

Bibliography
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The Gaurdian reported mass walkouts on a production of the Marat/Sade as people felt it was “utter filth” Trueman, Matt. "Marat/Sade Prompts Audience Walkouts at RSC." The Gaurdian 4 Oct. 2011: n. pag. The Gaurdian. The Gaurdian, 24 Oct. 2001. Web. 4 May 2013. .

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Weiss, Peter, Geoffrey Skelton, Adrian Mitchell, and Richard Peaslee. The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat: As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade. New York: Pocket, 1966. Print.

Whipping DeSade. 2012. Photograph. Flickr. Flickr, 14 July 2012. Web. 4 May 2013. .