This performance for Alexandrinsky theatre’s Small Stage, based on a play by Peter Weiss, is directed by Andrei Kalinin, who also acts as scenic designer. The Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Company of Inmates of the Asylum under the Direction of Monsieur de Sade is the first Kalinin’s staging at Alexandrinsky Theatre. Composer Ivan Volkov is in charge of musical score. The public knows both him and Kalinin as members of Alexandrinsky Theatre’s Chief Director Nikolai Roshchin creative team.

The play was written in 1963, its full title is “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”. The story is built around a fictitious political dispute between participants of French Revolution, who share their views on it fifteen years after the assassination. The play premiered on April 29, 1964 at Schillertheater (West Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany) and saw numerous productions worldwide, often under a shortened title Marat/Sade. In Russia the film adaptation by Peter Brooke (1967) achieved more prominence. The play was staged by Taganka Theatre (Moscow) in 1998 (director: Yuri Lyubimov).