Marie Antoinette

Northampton MA - The Smith College Department of Theater presents Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi on October 23, 24, 25, and 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre co-directed by Monica Lopez Orozco and Max Lerin ’25. In this modern take on the life of the famous French queen, Marie is a symbol of aristocratic extravagance and artifice. But as revolution begins to brew in France, the political becomes deeply personal as the once popular Marie’s world comes tumbling down. With the light and breezy banter at the palace and the chants of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!” in the streets, Marie Antoinette holds a mirror up to our contemporary society that might also be entertaining itself to death. Tickets are $5–15 at smitharts.ludus.com.

In Marie Antoinette, David Adjmi translates the gilded life of 18th century French aristocracy into the language of today’s entitled, cocooned ultra-rich. His play is grounded in history but is not a historical biography. Time Out New York called it a “jagged yet elegant historical riff…” adding “Adjmi complicates the satire by imbuing his doomed protagonist with intellectual vibrancy and genuine compassion.” Part satirical comedy, part history, part cautionary tale, Marie Antoinette speaks to a generation raised in the era of online celebrity worship where icons can be cancelled when cultural winds shift. “The society that Marie inhabited is not unlike where we are as a global society today,” says Assistant Professor of Theatre Monica Lopez Orozco who is co-directing the play with Max Lerin ’25. “The dawn of French democracy reminds me of our own country's struggles to come together for the greater good. I think this play has deep resonance as we head into an election season as a nation and have been examining and exploring aspects of freedom and activism as a community on campus.”

David Adjmi is a Tony Award winning playwright from New York and was recently named one of the Top Ten in Culture by the New Yorker magazine. His work has been featured or profiled in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, American Theatre, LitHub, Electric Literature, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Currently, Adjmi teaches in the M.F.A. program for playwriting at Hunter College. Marie Antoinette premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in September 2012. The play had its New York premiere at SoHo Rep in October 2013. “I’m very interested in people whose compasses for their lives are a bit off,” Adjmi says in an interview for Playbill. “They're struggling to understand both themselves and the role they're being asked to play in their lives and the lives of other people.”

The Smith College production features an ensemble cast of eleven students. In keeping with the tone of Adjimi’s play, the extravagance of Versailles and the brutality of the Revolution are presented through a contemporary pop culture lens. Students Alina Tschumakow ’26, set designer, and Rex Tans ’25, costume designer, along with lighting designer Lara Dubin and faculty sound designer Emily Duncan Wilson all bridge the 18th and 21st centuries to create Marie’s world as it descends from playful opulence to a painful reckoning. “I hope this play challenges people not to bury their heads in the sand and live in blissful ignorance of the problems in the world, but to wake up, open their eyes, and confront the world around them,” says co-director Max Lerin ‘25. “We have a responsibility to each other to care about this world and the people in it, to not turn away from the injustices that we may be shielded from, but others are not.”

The show runs Wednesday–Saturday, October 23–26 at 7:30 p.m. in Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre in the Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $5–15, available online at smitharts.ludus.com. Audiences should know that this play contains flashing lights, loud noises, strong language, and depicted violence. For more information including a complete content warning contact boxoffice@smith.edu.