BREAKDOWN BELOW. Please share a video of one of the speeches printed after breakdown.

Email your materials (headshot/resume/video) to KIM@TheTheaterProject.org,  Subject Line: REVOLUTIONISTS

BREAKDOWN

OLYMPE de GOUGES – 38. Badass activist playwright and feminist. Theatre nerd, excitable, passionate, a showman. Widowed and never remarried to ensure her personal freedom.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY – 25. Badass country girl and assassin. Very serious, hardened by righteousness, never been kissed. Has a pocket watch she keeps checking. Also plays FRATERNITE in a mask.

MARIE ANTOINETTE – 38. Less badass but fascinating former queen of France. Bubbly, graceful, opinionated, totally unaware, unintentionally rude, and oddly prescient. Never had a real friend. Also plays FRATERNITE in a mask.

MARIANNE ANGELLE -=30s. A badass black woman in Paris. She is from the Caribbean, a free woman, a spy working with her husband, Vincent. Tough, classy, vigilant, the sanest one of them all.

SIDES

Olympe

I’m not blocked. I’m just … mentally … hibernating. There’s a lot of pressure to write something profound these days. And then I keep thinking if I come up with a good title, it’ll get me started. Something tantalizing but really vague like… The Revolutionists. It begins with a guillotine... Well, that’s not a way to start a comedy. With an execution? That’s just basic dramatic writing. Don’t start with beheadings. Audiences don’t want plays about terror and death—no—they want…hope. Yes, I have to write about … Grace and power in the face of crisis. Artistic defiance. That’s good. There we go.

Okay, what if I write a play that is the voice of this revolution, but not the hyperbolic, angry yelling kind. I will write the wise and witty kind that satirizes and inspires and says to the held breath of a rapt audience… “something…profound.” So yeah. We’re gonna have to cut the guillotine.

Marie

OK I had no choice in becoming royalty, it was thrown at me. And by that I mean a mountain of free stuff and undeserved compliments. What would you do? You’d take them. They’re free. But just to be very clear, I did not say that bit about the cake. That was out of context. I thought I was ordering lunch.

I know what most people think of me. It’s not very nice. And I deserve…some of it. And I have a feeling I might die sooner than later, but I would very much like Later to know that I was a real person. Who bled and gave birth in a closed room with two hundred people watching so give me a little credit here. I just… I care. I care so much about my people and my country. I just need better press. You can do that for me, Madame De Gouges. I was hoping that you would. I would be honored to be in your play. And try to earn your respect. Via meaningful connection…and minor revisionism.

Marianne

Well. Vincent is a catch. He's strong, and tall, with these eyes that just make you tell him every little thing. And he doesn’t walk. Oh no. Vicent strides. Long legs and swinging arms, you know. And when that man wears a suit? Just give up, just don’t even try to look away. But when he takes it off?

He courted me for months, but the truth is I thought he was too handsome. Well, you don’t want them that dashing, it’d make me worry. I kept thinking “yes, he’s very nice” and “yes he’s from a good family.” But I just wasn’t sure I really knew him. Until. He let loose this laugh. We were talking about—I don’t know—and out comes this rumbly, and loud, and big-old-stupid laugh. And that’s when I agreed to marry him. They’re perfect when they’re just a little flawed. You know?

I miss him. And our kids, they’re with my mom. Revolutions aren’t for children. It’s hard. When Vincent went back to Saint-Domingue last month I... I know it was the right thing. But even where we’re apart for a day. I miss him.

Charlotte

And after all the shoving and the yelling, they get me to the prison. And I’m exhausted, right? And then they had to check my virginity, of course. And they were like “She’s a virgin! And I was like “not after you checked, I’m not.” And it wasn’t the intimate violation of it that bugged me –thought I swear to god some guy hit on me on the way to prison—It was that they were sure there was a man involved. “She wouldn’t have avenged her people on her own, she must have been fucked into it.” I mean Jesus Christ a girl can’t even assassinate someone without judgment. I’m joining Olymphe’s group. 

Joan of Arc was kinda crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m fed up, I had to kill him, it was a civic duty…that felt fucking awesome. I mean the feel of it? Of righteous vengeance is just…floral, like a blooming of power and rightness and—goddammit it’s what sex must feel like. The way that man looked at me with my knife in his chest. I was this close to him, his breath on my lips, leaning into him, and I said—I actually said this—“You. Die. Now.” But that’s not crazy that’s…just very literal.