Quills includes violence, protracted nudity, and blunt sexual dialogue.
Directed by the Rep Company's Associate Artistic Director John Amplas , Quills features Heath Lamberts as the Marquis de Sade. The play is set in 1807 in the Charenton Asylum, where the Marquis has been luxuriously imprisoned. With incarceration comes spare time that yields an almost exponential increase in his writing, which the newly appointed chief physician is desperate to suppress. The longer they continue their vexations, the deeper they root my principles in my heart. Playwright Doug Wright says he became interested in the Marquis de Sade when he read Maurice Lever's biography and then began reading the works of the Marquis himself.