A mad animal Man’s a mad animal I’m a thousand years old and in my time I’ve helped commit a million murders The earth is spread thick With squashed human guts We few survivors We few survivors Walk over a quaking bog of corpses Always under our feet Every step we take Rotted bones ashes matted hair Under our feet Broken teeth skulls split open A mad animal I’m a mad animal Prisons don’t help Chains don’t help I escape Through all the walls Through all the shit and splintered bones You’ll see it all one day I’m not through yet I have plans Peter Weiss from Marat/Sade
I just want to comment that humankind always lives in troubling, violent, despairing times. Perhaps that's part of what it is to be human. Without all the destruction and death we cause, there would be little to motivate artistic creation, right? We're always on the verge of annihilation and always creating responses to it. Sadly, nothing teaches us to do, think,or act any other way--if there's no genuine repentance, forgiveness or reconciliation we're doomed to remain trapped in our life-denying ways.
Yes exactly. This is the position of deSade in the dialectic which is presented in the play. This excerpt is sort of the “icing on the cake” of deSade’s argument which he begins by asking:
Before deciding what is right and what is wrong
We first must decide on who we are
And he recounts the story of a “gentle small tailor “ attacking a big man and eating his heart. And then he gets one of the patients of the asylum to do the above speech. So from a personal evil (the tailor) to the collective destruction that the “mad animal” propagates is the “Humans are evil” thesis.
Where do we go from there? Marat! His views are presented but he is disabled and we know he will be assassinated by one of his followers but the songs will always demand equality and justice.
Wow, did this bring back memories for me. I played in Marat Sade when I was in high school in a university production. My parents refused to come to the opening because I got raped in the production. Listening to Judy Collins song just now sent chills through me. I went on to study at the Royal Academy in London where the final term performed Marat. And then I saw the film with Glenda Jackson and longed to play Claudette Corbet. And now this from you. It all comes flooding back. Thanks for this!
Amazing how many of us were molded in some way by Marat/Sade. This is a very cursory post and doesn’t really do justice to the monumental piece that it was. I remember hearing about the production at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and how it came after “a session of the theatre of cruelty” led by Peter Brook and attended by Jerzy Grotowski among others. I am not sure I can verify the above. But in any case it became one of the standard bearers for the emerging experimental theatre.
You did a fine job of presenting the piece, though I'd love to read an essay by you about Marat/Sade going into more detail. Let me know! Maybe Peter Brook came to our RADA production!!! And of course, there was My Diner with Andre talking about Grotowski. I longed to be in Brook's touring company.
I just want to comment that humankind always lives in troubling, violent, despairing times. Perhaps that's part of what it is to be human. Without all the destruction and death we cause, there would be little to motivate artistic creation, right? We're always on the verge of annihilation and always creating responses to it. Sadly, nothing teaches us to do, think,or act any other way--if there's no genuine repentance, forgiveness or reconciliation we're doomed to remain trapped in our life-denying ways.
Yes exactly. This is the position of deSade in the dialectic which is presented in the play. This excerpt is sort of the “icing on the cake” of deSade’s argument which he begins by asking:
Before deciding what is right and what is wrong
We first must decide on who we are
And he recounts the story of a “gentle small tailor “ attacking a big man and eating his heart. And then he gets one of the patients of the asylum to do the above speech. So from a personal evil (the tailor) to the collective destruction that the “mad animal” propagates is the “Humans are evil” thesis.
Where do we go from there? Marat! His views are presented but he is disabled and we know he will be assassinated by one of his followers but the songs will always demand equality and justice.
…didn’t know about the play and Judy Collins singing songs of protest and rebellion. We surely need them now… desperately so…
Yep. This is an amazing musical in the realm of Brecht and pieces such as The Three Penny Opera, whose songs were so wonderful.
Peter
Wow, did this bring back memories for me. I played in Marat Sade when I was in high school in a university production. My parents refused to come to the opening because I got raped in the production. Listening to Judy Collins song just now sent chills through me. I went on to study at the Royal Academy in London where the final term performed Marat. And then I saw the film with Glenda Jackson and longed to play Claudette Corbet. And now this from you. It all comes flooding back. Thanks for this!
Amazing how many of us were molded in some way by Marat/Sade. This is a very cursory post and doesn’t really do justice to the monumental piece that it was. I remember hearing about the production at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and how it came after “a session of the theatre of cruelty” led by Peter Brook and attended by Jerzy Grotowski among others. I am not sure I can verify the above. But in any case it became one of the standard bearers for the emerging experimental theatre.
You did a fine job of presenting the piece, though I'd love to read an essay by you about Marat/Sade going into more detail. Let me know! Maybe Peter Brook came to our RADA production!!! And of course, there was My Diner with Andre talking about Grotowski. I longed to be in Brook's touring company.
Keep up the fine work.
Thank you for the encouragement! I do appreciate it.
Hope you expand this essay. Be sure to let me know!