Viva la Revolutionists!

The year is 1789. King Louis XVI has been executed and the monarchy in France is in shambles. The people want their freedom from oppression and will do whatever it takes to get it. This is the French Revolution.

LU’s department of theater and dance presents “The Revolutionists,” April 13-16 in the Studio Theatre.

“The Revolutionists” is a historical fiction about women in the French Revolution, including playwright Olympe De Gouge (Brianna Cobos), Charlotte Corday (Shelby Eason), and Marie-Antoinette (C.J. Jeffcoat), as well as a Haitian rebel, Marianne Angelle (Dominique Roman).

“This play’s literally in (De Gouge’s) mind,” Cobos said. “She's struggling with writer's block, but then each character comes in and she sheds light on each one. Throughout this, hopefully, you see her really struggling to write something prolific.

“I love getting to explore different characters and I have the privilege of having characters that have like a lot of backstories portrayed on stage. I think that's rewarding because they can use me as a canvas. That's really enjoyable and I love entertaining the audience.”

Charlotte Corday was a young woman thrust into an identity that she might not have wanted to at the beginning, Eason said.

“She had to assassinate a French figure to save her people, and she was only 25 when she died,” Eason said

Marianne is the only character who is purely fictional and serves as a composite of Black revolutionists.

“She's a strong, independent Black woman in her 30s who is not only an advocate for the abolition of slavery across the French Empire, but a spy for her people, her sisters, and her friends,” Roman said.

“The Revolutionists” is guest directed by Laura Moreno, her first Lamar production.

“As we were going through the script, it’s the fact that this is all happening Olympe’s brain, so this isn't a hypothetical situation,” she said. “It's not set in a real event, more something she has dreamt up in her mind as a playwright. The idea was to create this space and this story that was more an essence of, rather than set in fact or set in an exact realistic historical drama.”

Moreno said the set represents the corners of Olympe’s mind.

“You’ll have entrances and exits from the corners, the court, and her creative space, and where she runs off to,” Moreno said. “It also becomes the streets of Paris. It becomes the courtroom for Marie Antoinette's trial, and it becomes the scene with the guillotine. Just the idea that what existed then exists now, and that if it's done as an essence of a fuzzy memory, we're able to identify ourselves within it as opposed to it being an exact representation.”

Showtimes for “The Revolutionists” are April 13, 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m. and April 16 at 2 p.m. For more information, visit lamar.edu/events. To purchase tickets, visit lamar.edu/lutdtix.