From our earliest conversations about Marie Antoinette, Mary Beth encouraged me to listen to the words that playwright David Adjmi uses to talk about his show. The historical moments that inspired the play are, of course, important, but by looking at interviews Adjmi has done over the years, some explicitly about Marie Antoinette and some not, we were able to explore the lavish world of the play through his eyes. Since Adjmi’s voice has been so present for us during this process, we’d like to give you some of his wisdom as you enter into Marie’s realm with us!  

ADJMI ON THE GENESIS OF THE SHOW:  

"I was at the MacDowell Colony, and I was there to work on another project. But it was a very complicated project and I was driving myself crazy. I had never been in an artists’ colony before, so I was getting really panicked by the sheer latitude that I had every day. I didn’t know what to do with myself and I started having a meltdown. So I thought, “I’m not going to write this play anymore.” And I decided to read Veronica, Mary Gaitskill’s novel about a model. I was enjoying reading the book, and then I remember having this flash—“I’m going to write a play about Marie Antoinette.” I walked down to the public library and got a bunch of children’s books. Then I looked on the internet for two or three days and wrote down everything, just to get the timeline. And then I frenetically wrote the play as quickly as I could. The play just flew out of me. It was a very strange experience."  

David Adjmi in an interview with A.R.T. Dramaturg Ryan McKittrick 

ADJMI ON PLAYWRITING: 

"It’s different with every project. So much of playwriting is play, and people forget that. Especially when I teach. My students are all so serious. I’m like, Guys, you can’t do this if you’re so nervous. When I wrote Marie Antoinette, it was like I was playing pinball or something. The historical material just reverberated inside me. Sometimes I get into a zone: a certain wavelength or a frequency where I’m dancing with the material. The main thing is I don’t want to be avalanched or ambushed by my research. You know how you can see a play that’s really well researched, but the writer was just suffocated by the research because they didn’t have the arrogance or the insistence to be heard through it? They’re being very quiet and sitting with their hands folded and being a good little student."  

 David Adjmi in an interview with Jen Silverman for BOMB Magazine 

ADJMI ON THEMES IN MARIE ANTOINETTE: 

"At least in my play, there is not a lot of continuity of where Marie Antoinette came from and how she was raised and what she was doing. It’s almost like she wasn’t really raised. She was thrown into the world and given a role to play. So much of what the play is about is her trying to negotiate between the role and who she is inside, and she can’t do it. It’s a very difficult thing; it’s a trick between negotiating between the interior and the exterior. What you show people and how you negotiate power with them and then how you try to make yourself feel whole and safe inside. It’s how those two things happen together. She’s got a very big problem doing that.  

Then there is this notion of her trying to figure out how to be a responsible human being: responsible to herself, responsible to her family and responsible to the State and civic responsibility. She doesn’t understand any of it. She can’t be responsible really because she doesn’t understand herself. She doesn’t feel like she is a whole person. She feels like she is a lost, regressed child. I am very interested in that."  

David Adjmi in an interview with Sydney-Chanele Dawkins for DC Theater Arts