Whirlwind dramedy of four women navigating France’s Reign of Terror opens Friday

‘The Revolutionists’ to kick off Theatre in the Rough’s 35th season

Kelsey Riker plays Olympe de Gouges and Christina Michelle plays Marianne Angelle during a dress rehearsal of "The Revolutionists" at McPhetres Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (Ellie Ruel / Juneau Independent)

By Ellie Ruel

Juneau Independent

A play exploring the interplay of female relationships in times of tumult will make its stage debut Friday at McPhetres Hall.

 “The Revolutionists: A Comedy, A Quartet, A Revolutionary Dream Fugue, A True Story” was written by Lauren Gunderson and follows four real or historically-inspired women through the 1793 “Reign of Terror” period of the French Revolution.

Director Donnie Gott said she proposed the script to Theatre in the Rough for its timeliness after her daughter recommended it earlier this year.

“We repeat cycles, and everything is cyclical. The history repeats itself. And we have cycles within cycles, within cycles. Some of which can be good things coming full circle, but then also just getting kind of stuck,” she said. “To see the humanity of each other, and to see where we have things in common, and to realize that this is so trite that we have more in common than otherwise.”

The piece follows Olympe de Gouges, a playwright and political activist who published “A Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen” and abolitionist works. She meets Charlotte Corday, who assassinated writer Jean-Paul Marat for his extremist views; Marianne Angelle, a composite character of various female Haitian freedom fighters working as a spy in France, and Marie Antoinette.

“She's trying to write something that's important, and her friend, Marianne Angelle, the revolutionary freedom fighter from Haiti,” Gott explained. “Then Charlotte Corday comes in. She needs a line. She wants a line, a last line to say, as she kills Jean Paul Marat. ‘I want to kill this guy; I want to say something really profound. You're a writer. What should I say?’ And then Marie Antoinette comes in out of nowhere, and then the four of them, they get introduced individually, and then they just start to churn, and the rest of the play just sort of takes off with them churning up until heads come off.”

Gott said the production started with a lot of historical research into the events and convergence of the French and Haitian revolutions. While the play is exclusively set in 1793, much of the context lies outside that timeframe. 

“To know the time and the stakes and just where these women were at this, at this point in time when this play happened,” Gott said. “People were literally being beheaded every day in the street, and you know, if that was happening on a large scale, who knows what's happening on a small scale.”

A challenge with the script was representing the four women with comedy and levity without completely caricaturing them, according to Gott.

“It is a comedy, but that's not all it is,” she said. “And so to not caricature these women, to make them real, to make you care about them. Even though they're imperfect. Aren't we all?”

Christina Michelle plays Marianne Angelle in the play, based on multiple Haitian revolutionaries.

“The challenge is that I don't get to Google her and dive into her history,” Michelle said. “The cool thing is that I get to imagine what her experience would have been like during the French Revolution. It's also really cool too, what I've learned about the abolition oath itself — slavery during the revolution.”

She said before doing research, it was difficult to connect with some of her lines. 

“But then doing research about that and seeing the pamphlets that I'm begging a lot to make, to write for me, and the play, like, those were real pamphlets — researching them and seeing the images of them and really understanding the gravity of the times,” Michelle said while explaining her method.

Charlotte Corday is played by Stacy Katasse, who said she enjoys representing Corday’s conviction and the play’s balance of humor and darkness.

“There's a quote about fighting during the AIDS epidemic, where people were out marching in the streets, and they were fighting. And then they were in the club, partying all night, and it's the balance, and it's remembering what we're fighting for,” Katasse said. “And so there's kind of a lot of that in display of the sorority, and the women coming together and finding the joy in life while everything's falling apart.”

Michelle encouraged the audience to see what character they identify most with and explore what they can learn from them, highlighting de Gouge’s limit to her revolutionary involvement.

“I feel like there's a lot in life that is happening now that parallels in thoughts and feelings, certainly not to the same degree, but to what was happening to people. And I think that there's a lot of people that are looking on that. And so it's really been interesting to introspect on the times of the regular people as they were living their lives in the 1700 French Revolution,” she said. “Olympe, in particular, she is a revolutionist and she's doing the thing, she's writing. 
But then she's also afraid. Like, she's trying to do what she can from her office.”

“The Revolutionists” opens 7:30 p.m. Friday at McPhetres Hall at 325 Gold St. downtown. Tickets are available online and at the door.

• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com.