Rehearsals have begun for Theatre du Reve’s newest creation, Code Noir!
After nearly a year of research, brainstorming, workshopping, and coffee drinking, TdR’s artistic team (including Carolyn Cook and Thandi DeShazor, above) gathered around a table at the Alliance Francaise d’Atlanta to read through the script for our newest creation.
Code Noir: Les Aventures du Premier Comte de Monte Cristo is a new play based on the life of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, later known as Alex Dumas, a hero of the French Revolution.
Playwright (and producing artistic director) Carolyn Cook became interested in General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas when she started researching literature and history from around the Francophone world.
“TdR has done plays from France, Belgium, and Canada, and I really wanted to explore Africa and the Caribbean,” Carolyn said. “I stumbled on Dumas when a board member recommended the book The Black Count by Tom Reiss, a fairly recent biography of General Dumas.”
Dumas lived through a time in French history when there was momentous political and social change. He was born in the French colony of St. Domingue to a French aristocrat and an African slave, so he personally embodied the effects of colonialism. He came to live in France as a teenager, and by the time he was 30 the whole culture was turned upside down, and he was fighting for the Revolution. He lived through a huge expansion of rights for people of color in France (even the brief abolition of slavery), only to see those rights constricted again under Napoleon.
That story was fascinating enough, but the kicker is that while he’s been mostly forgotten, he has an extremely famous son – Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and many more classics.
Carolyn says she decided to write about General Dumas because she felt a personal connection to the experience of living through times of turbulent change:
“I like this character because he’s messy and imperfect, and because he straddles such fascinating periods and places in world history. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned already, just doing the research. It’s going to be amazing to work on the show!”
Code Noir: Les Aventures du Premier Comte de Monte Cristo opens Feb. 22 at 7Stages Back Stage Theatre. More info and tickets here!