Bucknell University’s Department of Theatre and Dance present The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson in the Tustin Studio Theatre Friday through Monday, Feb. 21-24. Performances will take place Friday, Saturday and Monday at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.
What do you get when you bring together a spy, an assassin, a former queen, a playwright, the Reign of Terror, and a little bit of revolution? Gunderson’s The Revolutionists!
In her “mostly a comedy,” America’s most-produced living playwright pens three historical women, and one that History forgot, to forcefully take the stage and re-carve themselves into the dismembered memories of the Reign of Terror. From here, they speak the truths about art and activism, feminism and fervor, misogyny and myopia, finally (somewhat) agreeing on the rights that all women should have (not just the privileged ones) but didn’t get the opportunity to or were stopped short of by their oppression, erasure and/or untimely deaths. Unfortunately, here three of the four characters’ heads will come to their final resting place, no longer vessels of their own stories and histories, at the base of the scaffolded guillotine. But not before they do some damage and damning of their own.
Within the production, the main character and playwright, Olympe de Gouges, is urgently and fervently trying to write these voices into permanence so what remains is a written record of “revolution for all” in which “all” truly means all people. But she also suffers from writer’s block and an armchair revolutionist’s paralysis. So come to the play to see what happens before she runs out of ink, nerve and time.
Due to the adult themes, the suggested age is 12-plus.
The play is directed by Karin Waidley, a visiting professor of theatre at Bucknell this spring. She has been an artist and an academic for over two decades.
Tickets are $12 for adults, $7 for Bucknell students and senior citizens and available at bucknell.edu/boxoffice, 570-577-1000 or at any Campus Box Office location.