Lauren Gunderson's The Revolutionists
at TIP Gives Women the Last Word

What happens when four women who have been relegated to the margins of history are given a stage, a voice, and -- perhaps, most importantly -- the opportunity to write their own endings? This seems to be the theatrical premise behind Lauren Gunderson's The Revolutionists, now playing at Raleigh's Theatre in the Park, under the direction of Yamila Monge.

Set during the bloodiest days of the French Revolution (1787-99), Lauren Gunderson's self-described "feisty feminist comedy" brings together playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, deposed queen Marie-Antoinette, and Marianne Angelle, a fictional Haitian revolutionary, fighting against slavery. History tells us that the first three never assembled in a Parisian room to debate politics, art, courage, and death -- and Marianne is Gunderson's creation -- but historical accuracy is apparently not the point.

At the center of the play is Lorelei Lemon as Olympe de Gouges, the playwright who desperately wants to write something important enough to change the world while simultaneously confronting the possibility that doing so might get her killed. De Gouges is an interesting historical figure around whom to build the story. An outspoken advocate for women's political rights, she challenged the male-dominated revolution with her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen. In Gunderson's hands, however, Olympe is no marble monument. She is a writer -- which means she procrastinates, doubts herself, searches for the right opening, worries whether her words matter, and discovers that writing about courage can be much easier than practicing it.

Lemon seems to be not only the comic embodiment of Olympe, but the introspective voice of the actual playwright, Lauren Gunderson, musing on her own work. Lemon has worked as an actor and writer in the region for roughly a decade, with companies that include Theatre in the Park, The Justice Theater Project, North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, Seed Art Share, Bare Theatre, Cary Players, and Sonorous Road Theatre and Film Studio. She is also co-founder and co-artistic director of Vixen Theatre Company and has written stage adaptations of Little Women and Treasure Island.

Into Olympe's creative crisis marches Shea Stanley as Charlotte Corday, the determined young woman preparing to assassinate radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat. Charlotte knows what she intends to do and, perhaps more importantly, knows how the story is likely to end. What she needs from Olympe is something writers have been asked to provide for centuries: the right words.

Stanley, who brought a very 21st century vibe to the historical heroine that connected with the audience, is also a writer as well as a performer. She earned a degree in Drama and Communications from UNC-Chapel Hill and trained for three summers at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School in Colorado. Her background includes acting, comedy, screenwriting, and playwriting; she has also written satire for INDY Week and Reductress and previously premiered a full-length play through the National Women's Theatre Festival.

Then there is Noelle Azarelo as Marie-Antoinette, perhaps the most recognizable of the four women and certainly the one who arrives carrying the greatest amount of historical baggage. It's hard to understand why this character is one of "The Revolutionists" women, but Azarelo played the over-the-top Queen with great assurance. Behind the elaborate public image is a woman who has lost her position, her family, her freedom and, eventually, any realistic hope of survival. Azarelo has an unusually broad theatrical background as an actor, director, producer, costumer, and stage manager. She founded Brave New Classics in 2020 and is also a founding board member of Switch Theatre Company.

The fourth member of this unlikely sisterhood is Gabrielle Vizcaino as Marianne Angelle, Gunderson's fictional Haitian revolutionary. Her struggle connects the language of liberty coming out of France with the brutal reality of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which would ultimately become Haiti.

Angelle also repeatedly forces the playwright, Olympe -- and, by extension, the audience -- to confront one of the play's central questions: Is creating art itself an act of resistance, or does resistance eventually require us to leave the safety of words and act? Vizcaino has been active in Triangle theater for several years and has appeared with Theatre in the Park as well as other local companies. She appeared as Anna Mae in Theatre in the Park's 2024 production of Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.

The Revolutionists is emphatically not a historical pageant. Lauren Gunderson's piece plays fast and loose with 18th-century history while using contemporary language and theatrical self-awareness for laughs. Characters recognize that they are in a play. Scenes are rewritten. History and fiction collide. Comedy arrives beside execution.

Indeed, Concord Theatricals' production notes make clear that the comedy is essential: although the story draws upon real women, historical transcripts and real executions, "the play is mostly a comedy." The work ultimately exists within Olympe's imagination as she approaches the scaffold.

That structure also presents director Yamila Monge with an interesting balancing act. The production should move easily between farce and terror, because the guillotine is never merely an historical decoration, lurking center stage. For these women, the question of who gets remembered -- and how -- becomes considerably more urgent.

Director Yamila Monge is no stranger to plays in which history, politics, and personal lives collide. Theatre in the Park's operations director and a longtime Triangle stage manager, Monge previously directed Best of Enemies for The Justice Theater Project, as well as By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and STEW at Theatre in the Park. That background seems particularly well suited to The Revolutionists, a play that jumps from anachronistic comedy to the terror of the guillotine in a matter of moments.

The Revolutionists is also very much a play about theater itself and the sometimes-preposterous belief held by writers, actors, and artists that telling a story can matter. But words survive their writers. Stories survive their subjects. Plays allow the dead to walk onto a stage centuries later and argue their cases again.

Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday, and Marie-Antoinette all went to the guillotine in 1793. More than two centuries later, they are together again in Raleigh, surrounded by an audience of living, breathing people, listening to what they have to say.

The cast and crew of Theatre in the Park's Aug. 6-16 production of Lauren Gunderson's The Revolutionists, directed by Yamila Monge

Lauren Gunderson's THE REVOLUTIONISTS (7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 13-16), directed by Yamila Monge and starring Lorelei Lemon as playwright Olympe De Gouges (1748-93), Shea Stanley as assassin Charlotte Corday (1768-93), Noelle Azarelo as former queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-93), and Gabrielle Vizcaino as fictional Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle (Theatre in the Park in the Ira David Wood III Pullen Park Theatre in Raleigh). PRESENTER/VENUE: http://www.theatreinthepark.com/, https://www.facebook.com/theatreintheparkraleigh/, https://www.instagram.com/theatreinthepark/, https://raleighnc.gov/parks-and-recreation/places/theatre-park-pullen-park, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_in_the_Park, https://x.com/TheatreInPark, and https://www.youtube.com/@theatreintheparknc. 2026 SEASON: https://www.theatreinthepark.com/whats-on/season-2026.html. DIRECTIONS/MAP: https://www.theatreinthepark.com/visit. ACCESSIBILITY: https://www.theatreinthepark.com/visit/accessibility.html. THE REVOLUTIONISTS (2016 Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and 2022 Off-Broadway self-described "Feisty Feminist Comedy"): https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/98500/the-revolutionists, https://www.laurengunderson.com/all-plays/the-revolutionists, https://www.spectra.theater/explore/production/64264aaa-e930-53c4-9de8-e4283ba80103, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Gunderson#The_Revolutionists. THE SCRIPT ([SCRIBD]): https://www.scribd.com/document/823888536/Revolutionists-Script-1. STUDY GUIDE: https://therevolutionists.tumblr.com/. LAUREN GUNDERSON (Atlanta, GA-born playwright, screenwriter, and feminist): https://www.laurengunderson.com/, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/lauren-gunderson-b-1982/, https://www.concordtheatricals.com/a/322/lauren-gunderson, https://www.spectra.theater/explore/artist/d70d42ee-d835-41fc-b1d1-f160bd499b04, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4454013/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Gunderson. TICKETS: $28 ($23 students, seniors, and active-duty military personnel), plus taxes. Click here to buy tickets. INFORMATION: 919-831-6058 or info@theatreinthepark.com. GROUP RATES (10+ tickets): 919-831-6058 or http://theatreinthepark.com/whatson/group-sales. PLEASE DONATE TO: Theatre in the Park.

WHAT: Triangle Review is a FREE weekly e-mail performing-arts and film newsletter, edited and published by Robert W. McDowell since August 2001.

TO SUBSCRIBE: To start your FREE subscription today, sign up in the subscription box at the beginning of this e-mail; or e-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type SUBSCRIBE-TR in the Subject: line. TO UNSUBSCRIBE: E-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type UNSUBSCRIBE-TR in the Subject: line.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? E-mail all questions, comments, and Letters to the Editor to RobertM748@aol.com. For Letters to the Editor, please include a daytime telephone number in your e-mail.

COPYRIGHT: Editorial content in all formats © 2026 Triangle Review and the author of each article. Reproduction in any form without authorization of Triangle Review and the respective authors is prohibited. Triangle Review maintains an archive of past issues. To request copies of past articles and/or issues, e-mail RobertM748@aol.com.