Undergoing Ann Liv Young’s Marie Antoinette

Upon entering the front doors of Chemistry Creative in Williamsburg, I could tell Marie Antionette would be unlike anything else I have seen. The audience enters through a tent filled to the brim with a collection of vintage accessories, knickknacks, and decor—all for sale and belonging to the creator of the show, Ann Liv Young. On the other side of the tent stands performer Megan Sipe in full hair, makeup, and costume, selling her homemade chocolates. All the while, Young bounces around, JBL speaker at her hip, helping the audience get settled, selling her wares, preparing for the show. Every performance of the show sold out, yet Young finds space for anyone interested in attending this hot theatrical ticket. I sat down in a folding chair in front of a man in a recliner with a small dog on his lap. Young talks to him and pets the dog before moving on to talk to her daughter, Lovey, who is standing in the center of the playing space in a wig and gown, holding a lit candle as a slideshow of images of the performers when they were younger plays behind her. As the play begins to unfold and the audience enters the world of Marie Antionette, we are all swept up into an experience evoking far more than a historical French monarch.

The show ran in the Under the Radar Festival, where it was billed as a “play within a play” about two performers Alexandra Sabina and Tom Ruth, who fantasize about being famous but are marginalized by society and struggle with mental illness. Alongside the real life experiences of the two performers is the second play, in which “Sabina and Ruth play Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, another couple with problems.”

The fourth wall never truly exists in the world of Marie Antionette. The show begins as Young excuses her daughter “offstage” (the offstage space is a tent directly behind the seating area) and speaks directly to the audience about the process of making this piece and how difficult it has been working with mentally ill people. She used to perform the show out of her apartment as a piece of “dinner theatre.” Marie Antionette with Under the Radar is performed in a single-story warehouse space with audience members in folding chairs in a three-quarter thrust stage position without the presence of an onstage or backstage. Instead, the performers move around an empty playing space in the center for the chairs while technicians and “off-stage” performers watch behind the audience.

It is hard to categorize this show within the plethora of traditional US theatre genres. Even in a festival of experimental theatre, the experience of Marie Antionette felt unique. In attempting to describe the show afterwards, I landed on an understanding of the piece through using the tenants of “theatre of cruelty.” Theatre of cruelty was first dreamed up in TheTheater and Its Double by theatremaker and writer Antonin Artaud in 1938. Backstage characterizes theatre of cruelty as  “a type of experimental theater, a philosophy, and a discipline. The Theatre of Cruelty uses sensory details such as expressions, gestures, sounds, and lights to shock audiences.” Sensory details are all used within Young’s Marie Antionette to shock audiences, making theatre of cruelty a useful means with which to discuss the show’s techniques.

Young created an adrenaline rush for all in the space.

The show never strays from direct communication between the spectator and the spectacle. Audience interaction is baked in. Young always has an eye to the crowd and is unafraid to call people out directly for their facial expressions and perceived perception of the show as it progresses. Young cuts from an emotionally heated moment with one of her performers to a direct address of the audience, asking if anyone has any questions up to this point. A woman has a critique of Young’s treatment of her performers. Young returns to this audience member throughout the show. She even has one of the performers, Sabina, perform “the apology number” to her directly: Sabina gets in the audience member’s personal space without touching her, singing the song “Apologize” by Timbaland (cued by Young on her handheld speaker) loudly while her fellow performer, Ruth, dances behind her. I was lucky enough to speak with the performers, Ruth, Sipe, and Sabina, about their experiences creating and performing the show. Ruth said in regard to interacting with the audience, “I never felt adrenaline like that before.” Young created an adrenaline rush for all in the space.

The costuming of the show, with its main performers clad in nude skintight unitards, white face paint and wig caps, is another example of theatre of cruelty within the show. Putting marginalized performers in these costumes alienates them and renders them more exposed and vulnerable. As such, it is a visual representation of the separation of those with mental illness from those around them. In addition, these costumes add to the otherworldliness of Marie Antionette. This otherworldliness increases as the show continues.

The show is an unstructured exercise in relying on audience response rather than scripted text. Young has created a structure of “scenes,” which she uses to prompt the performers into the next themed and guided improvisation. For example, we see “the baby scene,” “the boat scene,” “the dough scene.” The constant inclusion of the audience into the show’s progression necessitates an improvisational structure, rather than staying within the confines of a pre-written text. The performance unfolds differently every time, as the action onstage is received by the audience and the audience’s reactions are received by Young. It is a constant conversation of ephemeral, visceral experience, rather than one of sitting and watching a rehearsed and presented published text.

Artaud does not use the word cruelty to suggest enacting sadism towards audiences or performers, as I have heard it often referenced. In The Theatre and Its Double he says, “as soon as I have said ‘cruelty,’ everybody will at once take it to mean ‘blood.’” Instead, “‘theater of cruelty’ means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all.” It is about “the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.” This feels like an important distinction to include, considering Marie Antionette is not a show devoid of controversy and has been criticized for treating its performers and audience cruelly.

Young is not an artist for whom controversy is remotely new. Her work is known for toying with ideas of ethics and pushing transgressively on audiences’ sense of risk. In an interview with BOMB Magazine she states,

I think I just like danger. I really want to make something that is not just a beautiful thing to look at, or even something difficult to think about or understand. I really wanted this to be something people really feel, like in their bodies. I think it’s important for me that your eyes are really affected and also your heart. Like, maybe you start sweating. I really want people to feel themselves wake up a little bit.

On any given night you would see someone sobbing, someone laughing hysterically, someone repulsed, someone horrified, someone moved, someone with their mouth hanging open.

This show certainly made me sweat, vocally react at multiple points, and sit on the edge of my seat with my jaw agape in disbelief. Sabina attested,

One of the best things is the absolute buffet of reactions. We had people coming back for six shows. People saying the show changed their lives and made them get in touch with their own struggles. On any given night you would see someone sobbing, someone laughing hysterically, someone repulsed, someone horrified, someone moved, someone with their mouth hanging open, etc.

During the question and answer portion of the show, the rest of the audience and I grappled with what we were watching in conversation with its creator. How real was this character of Young before us? How real was any of this performance? In my talks with the performers, they spoke to their positive experiences working with Young. Ruth said,

I think Ann Liv Young preserves aspects of her full theatrical character until it is showtime...energy that gets more charged and reactionary as the shows escalate. I feel we have [a] similar sense of humor and making each other laugh and finding the humor [in] how fucked up life is and staying positive... I think if we had our best effort to show up and not be late to every show and are ready when she asks us to be, she steps it up to the next level.

If the Young we see in performance is not the person she is to the cast outside of these shows, it begs the question, what in this crazy world created before us is true? Sabina told me,

So many people wanted to know what was real and what wasn't and how some of the things they saw they felt weren't ethical. Was it satire? Were we okay? Are we really people who [are] struggling or just acting? I always say I can't answer or give anything away. The show is meant to blur the lines of fantasy and reality.

The treatment of the mentally ill performers within the show raised red flags for many watching. Much of the negative reaction to the show I have seen has stemmed from this conflict and its implications. In fact, the aforementioned audience member who Young singled out during the performance I attended was a mental health professional who took umbrage with this very thing. She eventually left about two-thirds of the way through the performance with a “Bye” and a hand wave, to which Young responded, “Bye, asshole” and continued on with the show as usual. This was certainly not the first time someone left this show mid-performance; the cast is used to it.

The uncertainty of what was reality within the show sparked nuanced questions from the audience. A particularly interesting discussion that arose during the question and answer portion of the performance I attended surrounded the idea of mentally ill people’s agency. If these performers are uncomfortable with or offended by the way they are interacted with in the show, Young reminds us, “they can leave if they want.” And the performers responded to the audience about the harmful idea that folks with mental illness can’t advocate for their own needs and wishes. It is infantilizing to imagine they are stuck in a situation they don’t want to be in because they are mentally ill. As Sipe describes it, “The performance blends real life and acting. So sometimes we play a character, and sometimes we play ourselves.” A vulnerability to show oneself fully in performance was seen in all the performances in Marie Antionette in a way that added to the visceral experience of the show. Sabina said,

I am pretty much very raw and vulnerable in [the] show. You have got to be. I try and take how I am feeling and put all that energy into the show. It's been something I have learned to do is to take everything I am going through and really put that into my life/Marie Antoinette's life full throttle.

This is not a play you witness, instead it is a play you undergo.

I must admit there is much about this show I don’t understand. I don’t understand the framing of the story of Marie Antoinette when the show doesn’t delve heavily into her life and its themes. I don’t understand the use or need for some of the musical numbers or scenes. I found some of Young’s comments to go too far and cross a bridge into offensive territory. Yet I don’t think that makes the show a bad one. Sitting in that warehouse space in Williamsburg, I felt the most delightfully shocked and agog any performance has ever made me feel. It was a visceral, rather than intellectual, event. I don’t think it really matters that not all of it made sense to me. I realize the need for every piece to make sense comes from an intellectualization of theatre and the experience of witnessing a play. And this is not a play you witness; instead, it is a play you undergo. It is a thing you feel, rather than a thing you watch and consider from a comfortable mezzanine seat. These qualities are what makes this show so unique and its impact so long lasting.

I still find myself returning to what occurred in that space and unable to fully articulate what it was that I took part in, what it is that the show is truly about. And maybe it doesn’t matter what I think the show is about. Maybe it doesn’t matter that I didn’t fully understand all of the pieces of the show. Maybe what matters is that it made me feel something. That it made me feel alive. In the words of Sipe, “I think the beauty of performance is that it brings up things for people. Marie Antionette may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it makes people feel things. And it prompts conversation and hopefully growth.” I think right now we can benefit from art that makes us feel things. We can benefit from leaving our over thinking minds and endless doom scrolling for a few hours. We can benefit from being outside of our comfort zone and living through a singularly unique experience. We can benefit from more shows like Marie Antionette.