PHOTO CREDIT: David Cecsarini
For the second time in three years, Lauren Gunderson tops the list of the most-produced playwrights in America. That’s according to American Theatre magazine’s annual survey of nearly 400 professional theaters across the county. And it’s a responsibility that Gunderson grapples with forthrightly in her lacerating comedy, The Revolutionists. I had to read it twice because, as in Gunderson’s earlier hit, I and You, the ending of The Revolutionists is so surprising and so moving that I had to rethink everything that led to it. It was commissioned and first produced in Cincinnati in early 2016. It looks to me to be a lasting treasure. Next Act Theatre will open its 30th season with the Milwaukee premiere on Friday, Sept. 27.
Gunderson sets her play in Paris in 1793 during the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution, but she makes it wonderfully clear that this is dress-up. Part of the fun of her script is that the dialogue is hilariously contemporary. So are the attitudes, hopes and fears of the four women characters, all of whom are based on real women from the period. They are the early feminist political writer and playwright Olympe de Gouges; Charlotte Corday, who assassinated the bloodthirsty journalist Jean-Paul Marat; Marie Antoinette, the doomed former queen; and Marianne Angelle, a composite of the abolitionists who fought successfully to end slavery in the French colonies of the New World.
Artistic director David Cecsarini’s company has become our local Gunderson expert. This is the fourth Gunderson script to be staged by Next Act Theatre in recent seasons, following I and You, Silent Sky and The Taming. Next Act regularly stages new, timely, substantive plays at its excellent home on South Water Street, always with first-rate professionals. The distinguished Laura Gordon is directing this production.
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“There are more than a few moments in my life where I question if what I do has any future, any import, anything past a little piece of entertainment,” Gordon says. “I think Gunderson is coming at that—the question of what value a writer has, what value a story has, what value theater has, and what is going to survive after we’re gone. Those are questions I have all the time.”
In the play, the abolitionist wants de Gouges to write political pamphlets, the assassin wants last words to deliver at her execution, and the former queen wants “better press.” The historical Olympe de Gouges is best remembered for writing a “Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen,” which won her no friends in the all-male French National Assembly. She wrote many pamphlets pleading for an end both to slavery and the death penalty, as well as a play that, while it supported democracy, was sympathetic to the royal family. The de Gouges of Gunderson’s imagination does all those things while fighting her own demons; she maintains her sharp wit, but there’s a price.
Humor: “One of Our Best Weapons”
“The thread that’s resonating most loudly for me right now,” Gordon says, “is this idea of sororité, sisterhood, of not having to go it alone. It has great roles for four women, and the ensemble formed really nicely over the first week. That’s because of the verisimilitude between a play where women are supporting each other and are there for each other, and a group of actresses who are actually doing that, too: taking care of each other and holding each other up in a way that really serves the play and serves them as artists. Everyone’s fighting for what we believe in today but obviously also fighting for what the future of the world will be.
“I think the biggest challenge is about the tone,” she continues. “The stakes are so high, and it’s moving so quickly, that the characters don’t know they’re in a comedy, so it’s like you can’t land a punch line. I want to make sure that the audience has a really fun time with the comedy but that the message lands. I think it’s there in the writing. She’s such a smart playwright. She makes a point about how important humor is for us right now. It’s one of our best weapons.”
Does Next Act’s 30th season have a theme? “It never happens that way,” Cecsarini says. “I love the idea of starting with a full boat of women out there. I think it catches one of the moments of our time. And I love some of the lines in this play, like ‘we will laugh at the hypocrites,’ and how you can be so disturbed by a play and yet not by death in the world. It’s about theater artists and writers and their love and caring about what theater is about. I’m very happy to interrogate that on our stage.”
The Revolutionists runs Sept. 27-Oct. 20 (preview on Thursday, Sept. 26) at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets and more information, call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
