The Balcony
Encyclopedia
The Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet
. Since Peter Zadek
directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club
in London
in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook
, Erwin Piscator
, Roger Blin
, Giorgio Strehler
, and JoAnne Akalaitis
. Set in an unnamed city that is experiencing a revolutionary uprising in the streets, most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel
that functions as a microcosm
of the regime of the establishment
under threat outside. The play's dramatic structure
integrates Genet's concern with meta-theatricality
and role-playing and consists of two central strands: a political conflict between revolution
and counter-revolution and a philosophical one between reality and illusion. Genet suggested that the play ought to be performed as a "glorification of the Image and the Reflection." His biographer, Edmund White
, writes that with The Balcony, along with The Blacks
(1959), Genet re-invented modern theatre. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
described the play as the rebirth of the spirit of the classical Athenian
comic playwright Aristophanes
, while the philosopher Lucien Goldmann
argued that despite its "entirely different world view
" it constitutes "the first great Brechtian
play in French literature
." Martin Esslin
has called The Balcony "one of the masterpieces of our time."
in which its madam, Irma, "casts, directs, and co-ordinates performances in a house of infinite mirrors and theaters." Genet uses this setting to explore roles of power in society; in the first few scenes patrons assume the roles of a bishop
who forgives a penitent, a judge
who punishes a thief, and a general
who rides his horse. Meanwhile, a revolution
is progressing outside in the city and the occupants of the brothel anxiously await the arrival of the Chief of Police. Chantal, one of the prostitutes, has quit the brothel to become the embodiment of the spirit of the revolution. An Envoy from the Queen arrives and reveals that the pillars of society (the Chief Justice, the Bishop, the General, etc.) have all been killed in the uprising. Using the costumes and props in Irma's "house of illusions" (the traditional French name for a brothel), the patrons' roles are realised when they pose in public as the figures of authority in a counter-revolutionary effort to restore order and the status quo
.
in which Irma's dream of three wounded young men—who personify blood, tears, and sperm—is enacted immediately before Arthur returns to the brothel and is shot abruptly. The second version is the longest and most political. The third version is shorter and reduces the political content of the scene with the café revolutionaries. Bernard Frechtman's first English translation (published in 1958) was based on Genet's second version, while Frechtman's second, revised English translation (published in 1966) was based on Genet's third version. A translation by Barbara Wright
and Terry Hands
, which the RSC
used in its 1987 production, incorporates scenes and elements from all three versions.
Genet wrote the first version of the play between January and September 1955, during which time he also wrote The Blacks
and re-worked his screenplay The Penal Colony. Immediately afterwards, in October and November the same year, he wrote Her, a posthumously published one-act play about the Pope
, which is related to The Balcony. Genet took his initial inspiration for The Balcony from Franco's Spain, explaining in a 1957 article that:
Genet was particularly interested at the time in newspaper reports of two projects for massive tombs: the Caudillo
s own colossal memorial near Madrid
, the Valle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen"), where he was buried in 1975, and the projected mausoleum
of Aga Khan III
in Aswan
, Egypt
. They provided the source for the Chief of Police's longing for a great mausoleum and the founding of a funerary cult around him in the play. The meditations on the contrast between Being
and Doing that the Bishop articulates in the first scene recall the "two irreducible systems of values" that Jean-Paul Sartre
suggested in Saint Genet
(1952) Genet "uses simultaneously to think about the world."
Marc Barbezat's company L'Arbalète published the first version of The Balcony in June 1956; the artist Alberto Giacometti
created several lithographs
based on the play that appeared on its cover (including a tall, dignified Irma, the Bishop who was made to resemble Genet, and the General with his whip). Genet dedicated this version to Pierre Joly, a young actor and Genet's lover at the time. Genet began to re-write the play in late October 1959 and again in May 1960, the latter prompted by its recent production under the direction of Peter Brook
. He worked on the third version between April and October 1961, during which time he also read Friedrich Nietzsche
's The Birth of Tragedy
(1872), a work of dramatic theory
that was to become one of Genet's favourite books and a formative influence on his ideas about the role of myth and ritual
in post-realist theatre
.
on 22 April 1957, in a production directed by Peter Zadek
at the Arts Theatre Club
, a "private theatre club" that enabled the production to circumvent the Lord Chamberlain
's ban on public performances of the play (though the censor
still insisted that what he considered to be blasphemous
references to Christ
, the Virgin, the Immaculate Conception
and Saint Theresa be cut, along with the failed revolutionary Roger's castration near the end of the play). It featured Selma Vaz Dias as Irma and Hazel Penwarden as Chantal. Genet himself participated in the theatrics during the opening-night performance when he accused Zadek of the "attempted murder" of his play and attempted to obstruct the performance physically, though police officers prevented him from entering the theatre. Genet objected to what he called its "Folies Bergères
"-style mise en scène
. The production was well-received for the most part. Two years later in 1959 the play was produced at the Schlosspark-theater in Berlin
under the direction of Hans Lietzau
. This production utilised a colour TV set for Irma's surveillance and switchboard machine.
production opened Off-Broadway
in a theatre in the round
production at the Circle in the Square theatre on 3 March 1960. This production was directed by José Quintero
, who shortened the text considerably, and featured Nancy Marchand
as Irma (who was later replaced by Grayson Hall
), Roy Poole as the Chief of Police, Betty Miller
as Carmen, Jock Livingston as the Envoy, Arthur Malet
as the Judge, Sylvia Miles
as Marlyse, and Salome Jens
as Elyane. The production was very well-received and won the 1960 Obie Award
s for Genet for Best Foreign Play, for David Hays for its scenic design
, and a Distinguished Performance award for both Livingston and Marchand; the production became what was at the time the longest-running Off-Broadway play in history, with 672 performances.
Peter Brook
had originally planned to direct the play in 1958 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris
, until he was forced to postpone when the theatre's artistic director, Simone Berriau, was threatened by the Parisian police. Brook recounts:
Brook eventually directed the play's French première two years later, which opened on 18 May 1960 at the Théâtre du Gymnase
in Paris. The production featured Marie Bell
as Irma, Loleh Bellon as Carmen, and Roger Blin
as the Envoy. Brook designed the sets, which used a revolve
for the first few scenes in the brothel. The scene in the café with the revolutionaries was cut and many of Genet's cruder words were omitted because the actresses refused to speak them; Genet objected to both decisions, as well as the use of a revolve. Public reaction to Brook's production was mixed. Lucien Goldmann
thought that Brook's naturalistic
decor and acting style (with the exception of Blin and Muselli's performances) obscured the play's "symbolic, universal character" (which an epic
design
, he suggests via a comparison with Mother Courage and Her Children
, and defamiliarised mode of acting would have foregrounded), while Brook's decision to transform the set only once (dividing the play into a period of order and one of disorder) distorted the play's tripartite structure (of order, disorder, and the re-establishment of order). The production prompted Genet to re-write the play.
Leon Epp directed a production in 1961 at the Volkstheater
in Vienna
, which subsequently transferred to Paris. Erwin Piscator
directed a production at the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt
, which opened on 31 March 1962 with scenic design
by Johannes Waltz and music by Aleida Montijn. A production opened in Boston
in November 1966, while Roger Blin
, who had played the Envoy in Brook's 1960 production, directed the play in Rotterdam
in April 1967. In Britain, the Oxford Playhouse also produced the play in 1967, under the direction of Minos Volanakis
, a friend of Genet's who, working under a pseudonym
, also designed the sets. His scenic design utilised Melinex
to create a "a revolving labyrinth of silver foil mirrors."
Victor Garcia
directed a production at the Ruth Escobar Theatre in São Paulo
in 1969, which Genet saw in July 1970. The production was staged under the new regime of Brazil
's military dictator General Garrastazu Médici
; the actress who played Chantal, Nilda Maria, was arrested for anti-government activities and her children were sent to Public Welfare, prompting Genet to petition the wife of the city's governor for their release. In Garcia's production, the audience observed the action from vertiginous balconies overlooking a pierced 65' plastic and steel tunnel; the actors performed on platforms within the tunnel, or clinging to its sides, or on the metal ladders that led from one platform to another, creating the impression of animals driven insane within the cages of a zoo. The aim, Garcia explained, was to make the public feel as though it was suspended in a void, with "nothing in front of it nor behind it, only precipices." It won 13 critics' awards in the country and ran for 20 months. As already mentioned, Garcia's boldness and endeavour led to the arrival of Jean Genet to Brazil in 1970, that considered this production the best montage of his text — making it an international reference to the genetians studies.
Antoine Bourseiller directed the play twice, in Marseilles in 1969 and Paris in 1975. Genet saw Bourseiller's first production in February 1969, which set the scenes with the revolutionaries inside Irma's brothel and cast non-actors in the leading roles, including Bourseiller's wife, Chantal Darget, as Irma. Writing to the cast, Genet advised: "You can break it [the play] into pieces and then glue them back together, but make sure that it holds together." Genet wrote many letters at that time to Bourseiller about the art of acting.
staged the play at the Aldwych Theatre
, London, opening on 25 November 1971 with Brenda Bruce
as Irma, Estelle Kohler
as Carmen, and Barry Stanton as the Chief of Police; its director was Terry Hands
and its designer was Farrah. The RSC premièred another production, with the same director and designer, on 9 July 1987 at the Barbican Theatre, in a translation by Barbara Wright and Terry Hands. Dilys Laye
played Irma, Kathryn Pogson
played Carmen, and Joe Melia
played the Chief of Police in this production. On both occasions the RSC performed a version of the play that incorporated scenes and elements from Genet's texts of 1956 and 1960 that do not appear in the French edition of 1962. This version was also used in a production at the Abbey Theatre in New York, which opened on 4 December 1976 and featured Karen Sunde as Irma, Ara Watson as Carmen (later replaced by Carol Fleming), Tom Donaldson as the Chief of Police, and Christopher Martin as the Envoy.
Giorgio Strehler
directed a production at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan
in 1976. Richard Schechner
directed an "updated" version with The Performance Group
in New York in 1979. He transformed the revolution into another fantasy staged in the brothel (as Bourseiller had done ten years earlier in Marseilles) and made Roger shoot Chantel when he realises that she still belongs to the brothel.
staged, although he neither attended rehearsals nor saw it performed there; the production opened on 14 December 1985, under the direction of Georges Lavaudant.
JoAnne Akalaitis
directed the play in a translation by Jean-Claude van Itallie at the American Repertory Theater (on their Loeb Stage) in Cambridge, Massachusetts
, which opened on 15 January 1986, with choreography by Johanna Boyce, sets by George Tsypin
and music by Ruben Blades
. Akalaitis set the play in a Central American republic and added a "Marcos
"-figure (played by Tim McDonough) as the leader of the revolutionaries. Joan MacIntosh played Irma, Diane D'Aquila
played Carmen, Harry S. Murphy played the Chief of Police, and Jeremy Geidt played the Envoy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ellen Thomas played Irma and Angelique Rockas Carmen. The French actor Yves Aubert was interviewed at length by the BBC French Language Service. Emminent people who saw this performance were the great film director Nicholas Roeg and his actress wife Teresa Russell.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
directed a production at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York in 1990. Angela Sargeant played Irma, Freda Foh Shen
played Carmen, Sharon Washington played the Envoy, and Will Rhys played the Chief of Police, while Paul Wonsek designed the sets and lighting. The Jean Cocteau Repertory company produced the play at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre
in New York in 1999. Eve Adamson directed and designed the lighting, while Robert Klingelhoffer designed the sets. Elise Stone played Irma, Craig Smith played the Chief of Police, and Jason Crowl played the Envoy.
suggests that the themes
of The Balcony may be divided between those that are essential and primary and those that are non-essential and secondary. Those that we may recognise from Genet's earlier work—the double, the mirror, sexuality, dream-death vs. reality-impure life—belong to the secondary level, he argues, while the play's essential theme is a clear and comprehensible analysis of the transformation of industrial society
into a technocracy
. Genet relates the experiences of his characters "to the great political and social upheavals of the twentieth century," Goldmann argues, particularly important among which is "the collapse of the tremendous hopes for revolution
." He discerns in the play's dramatic structure
a balance of three equal movements—"established order, threat to order, and order again re-established." The first section of the play dramatises the way in which the prestigious images of the established order—the Bishop, the Judge, the General—belie the actual bearers of power in modern society:
Irma and the Chief of Police "possess the real power," Goldmann points out; they "represent the two essential aspects of technocracy: the organization of an enterprise
and the power of the State
." Consequently, the Chief of Police's dilemma dramatises the historical process of "the growth in prestige of the technicians of repression in the consciousness of the great masses of people."
The subject of the play is the transformation by means of which "the Chief of Police comes to be part of the fantasies of power of the people who do not possess it." This process is borne by Roger, the revolutionary leader whose downfall forms part of the third section:
To the extent that "realism" is understood as "the effort to bring to light the essential relationships that at a particular moment govern both the development of the whole of social relation
s and—through the latter—the development of individual destinies and the psychological life of individuals," Goldmann argues that The Balcony has a realist structure and characterises Genet as "a very great realist author":
While Goldmann detects an "extremely strong" Brechtian
influence in The Balcony, Carol Rosen characterises Genet's dramaturgy
as "Artaudian
." "Just as Mme. Irma's brothel is the intangible shadow of a real social phenomenon," she suggests, "her closet drama
s are the Artaudian double of their impotent bases in truth." Rosen reads Irma's brothel as "a metaphysical
construct in a discussion play about the value of mimetic
ritual
, the transcendence
possible in play
, and the magical efficacy
of the theater
itself"; it is "more than a naturalistically
ordered stage brothel; it is more than real; it expresses conflicting ideas with the erotic nuances of a dream
." In line with Genet's interest in Nietzsche
's The Birth of Tragedy
(1872), Rosen aligns the development of Irma's relationship to the audience with the mythic narrative of Dionysos
toying with Pentheus
in Euripides
' tragedy
The Bacchae
(405 BCE). In contrast to Goldmann's analysis of the play as an epic
defamiliarisation of the historical rise of technocracy, Rosen sees The Balcony as a theatre of cruelty
staging of "a mythic dimension to the dark side of the human soul." Like Goldmann, J. L. Styan, too, detects the influence of Brechtian defamiliarisation in the play, which he reads as a "political examination of how man chooses his role in society." Styan argues that—despite the symbolism of evil and the sensational, emotionally-disturbing staging of the secret desires of its audience—there is in Genet's theatre "a sharp intellectual edge, a shocking clear-headedness" that "links him more with Pirandello
than with Artaud."
Genet's theatre, the editors of Jean Genet: Performance and Politics argue, stages an interrogation and deconstruction
of "the value and status of the theatrical frame itself." Postmodern performance, though, provides the most appropriate frame of reference for understanding it, they suggest. They observe that, in common with his other late dramas, The Blacks
(1959) and The Screens
(1964), The Balconys exploration of explosive political issues appears to contradict its author's calls for a "non-historical, mythical stage." They interpret The Balcony as an examination of "how revolution
s are appropriated
through mass-media manipulation
." Taking their cue from Genet's note on the play from 1960, they conclude that Genet felt that "conventional political theatre
too often indulges the spectator by depicting the revolution as having already happened. Instead of encouraging the audience to change the world, it acts as a safety valve, and thus works to support the status quo
." His is a form of political theatre that is "neither didactic
nor based on realism"; instead, it fuses the metaphysical
or sacred
and the political and constitutes the most successful articulation to date of "post-modernist performance and Brechtian critical theatre
." It "shows us that performance is not divorced from reality," they suggest, but rather that it is "productive of reality."
Joseph Strick
, with whom he agreed to a cinematic adaption of the play. The film version of The Balcony
was released in 1963
, directed by Strick. It starred Shelley Winters
, Peter Falk
, Lee Grant
and Leonard Nimoy
. The film garnered nominations for George J. Folsey
for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography
and for Ben Maddow
for a Writers Guild of America Award
award.
Robert DiDomenica composed an opera
tic version of the play in 1972, though it did not receive its première until Sarah Caldwell
of the Opera Company of Boston
produced it in 1990. Having seen the New York production of the play in 1960, DiDomenica based his libretto
on Bernard Frechtman's revised translation of 1966, though he did not acquire the rights to do so until shortly before Genet's death, in 1986. A reviewer for The New York Times
found the production "a wonderfully intelligent construct, overlaid with a lyrical and dramatic sensibility that makes searing emotional contact at many crucial points." Mignon Dunn played Irma and Susan Larson
played Carmen.
In 2001/02, the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös
created an opera based on the French version of the play. It was staged for the first time at the Festival d'Aix en Provence on 5 July 2002.
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
. Since Peter Zadek
Peter Zadek
Peter Zadek was a German theatre and film director, play translator and screenwriter and is regarded as one of the greatest directors in German-speaking theater. He was the head of the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Bochum , the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg and the Berliner Ensemble from 1992 to 1996...
directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club
Arts Theatre
The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
, Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
, Roger Blin
Roger Blin
Roger Blin was a French actor and director notable for directing the first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot....
, Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler was an Italian opera and theatre director.-Biography:Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste to an Austrian father and a Franco-Slovene mother; he grew up speaking Italian but spoke French well and his German was passable. He became suddenly fatherless at the age of three, his...
, and JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
. Set in an unnamed city that is experiencing a revolutionary uprising in the streets, most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
that functions as a microcosm
Macrocosm and microcosm
Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale all the way down to the smallest scale...
of the regime of the establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...
under threat outside. The play's dramatic structure
Dramatic structure
Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics...
integrates Genet's concern with meta-theatricality
Metatheatre
The term "metatheatre", coined by Lionel Abel, has entered into common critical usage; however, there is still much uncertainty over its proper definition and what dramatic techniques might be included in its scope...
and role-playing and consists of two central strands: a political conflict between revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
and counter-revolution and a philosophical one between reality and illusion. Genet suggested that the play ought to be performed as a "glorification of the Image and the Reflection." His biographer, Edmund White
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
, writes that with The Balcony, along with The Blacks
The Blacks (play)
The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....
(1959), Genet re-invented modern theatre. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
described the play as the rebirth of the spirit of the classical Athenian
Theatre of Ancient Greece
The theatre of Ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was...
comic playwright Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, while the philosopher Lucien Goldmann
Lucien Goldmann
Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...
argued that despite its "entirely different world view
World view
A comprehensive world view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and...
" it constitutes "the first great Brechtian
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
play in French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
." Martin Esslin
Martin Esslin
Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...
has called The Balcony "one of the masterpieces of our time."
Plot synopsis
Most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothelBrothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
in which its madam, Irma, "casts, directs, and co-ordinates performances in a house of infinite mirrors and theaters." Genet uses this setting to explore roles of power in society; in the first few scenes patrons assume the roles of a bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
who forgives a penitent, a judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
who punishes a thief, and a general
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
who rides his horse. Meanwhile, a revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
is progressing outside in the city and the occupants of the brothel anxiously await the arrival of the Chief of Police. Chantal, one of the prostitutes, has quit the brothel to become the embodiment of the spirit of the revolution. An Envoy from the Queen arrives and reveals that the pillars of society (the Chief Justice, the Bishop, the General, etc.) have all been killed in the uprising. Using the costumes and props in Irma's "house of illusions" (the traditional French name for a brothel), the patrons' roles are realised when they pose in public as the figures of authority in a counter-revolutionary effort to restore order and the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
.
Characters
- Irma (Queen)
- Carmen
- Chief of Police
- Court Envoy
- Torturer (Arthur)
- Bishop
- Judge
- General
- Bishop's Girl (Rosine)
- Thief (Marlyse)
- General's Girl (Elyane)
- Beggar/Slave
- Beggar's Girl
- Blood (1st Photographer)
- Tears (2nd Photographer)
- Sperm (3rd Photographer)
- Chantal
- Georgette
- Roger
- Armand
- Louis
- Luke
- Mark
- Wounded Man
Textual history
The Balcony exists in three distinct versions, published in French in 1956, 1960, and 1962. The first version consists of two acts of fifteen scenes and includes a dream sequenceDream sequence
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other element. Commonly, dream sequences appear in many...
in which Irma's dream of three wounded young men—who personify blood, tears, and sperm—is enacted immediately before Arthur returns to the brothel and is shot abruptly. The second version is the longest and most political. The third version is shorter and reduces the political content of the scene with the café revolutionaries. Bernard Frechtman's first English translation (published in 1958) was based on Genet's second version, while Frechtman's second, revised English translation (published in 1966) was based on Genet's third version. A translation by Barbara Wright
Barbara Wright
Barbara Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.Wright, born in Worthing, studied music and art in Paris in the years before World War II...
and Terry Hands
Terry Hands
Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...
, which the RSC
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
used in its 1987 production, incorporates scenes and elements from all three versions.
Genet wrote the first version of the play between January and September 1955, during which time he also wrote The Blacks
The Blacks (play)
The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....
and re-worked his screenplay The Penal Colony. Immediately afterwards, in October and November the same year, he wrote Her, a posthumously published one-act play about the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
, which is related to The Balcony. Genet took his initial inspiration for The Balcony from Franco's Spain, explaining in a 1957 article that:
Genet was particularly interested at the time in newspaper reports of two projects for massive tombs: the Caudillo
Caudillo
Caudillo is a Spanish word for "leader" and usually describes a political-military leader at the head of an authoritarian power. The term translates into English as leader or chief, or more pejoratively as warlord, dictator or strongman. Caudillo was the term used to refer to the charismatic...
s own colossal memorial near Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, the Valle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen"), where he was buried in 1975, and the projected mausoleum
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...
of Aga Khan III
Aga Khan III
Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah, Aga Khan III, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, GCVO, PC was the 48th Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. He was one of the founders and the first president of the All-India Muslim League, and served as President of the League of Nations from 1937-38. He was nominated to represent India to...
in Aswan
Aswan
Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. They provided the source for the Chief of Police's longing for a great mausoleum and the founding of a funerary cult around him in the play. The meditations on the contrast between Being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
and Doing that the Bishop articulates in the first scene recall the "two irreducible systems of values" that Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
suggested in Saint Genet
Saint Genet
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr is a book by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre about the writer Jean Genet. It was first published in 1952...
(1952) Genet "uses simultaneously to think about the world."
Marc Barbezat's company L'Arbalète published the first version of The Balcony in June 1956; the artist Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
created several lithographs
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
based on the play that appeared on its cover (including a tall, dignified Irma, the Bishop who was made to resemble Genet, and the General with his whip). Genet dedicated this version to Pierre Joly, a young actor and Genet's lover at the time. Genet began to re-write the play in late October 1959 and again in May 1960, the latter prompted by its recent production under the direction of Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
. He worked on the third version between April and October 1961, during which time he also read Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music is a 19th-century work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism ...
(1872), a work of dramatic theory
Dramatic theory
Dramatic theory is a term used for works that attempt to form theories about theatre and drama. Examples of ancient dramatic theory include Aristotle's Poetics from Ancient Greece and Bharata Muni's Natyasastra from ancient India.- External links :...
that was to become one of Genet's favourite books and a formative influence on his ideas about the role of myth and ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
in post-realist theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
.
1950s
In a note of 1962, Genet writes that: "In London, at the Arts Theatre, I saw for myself that The Balcony was badly acted. It was equally badly acted in New York, Berlin and Paris - so I was told." The play received its world première in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 22 April 1957, in a production directed by Peter Zadek
Peter Zadek
Peter Zadek was a German theatre and film director, play translator and screenwriter and is regarded as one of the greatest directors in German-speaking theater. He was the head of the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Bochum , the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg and the Berliner Ensemble from 1992 to 1996...
at the Arts Theatre Club
Arts Theatre
The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...
, a "private theatre club" that enabled the production to circumvent the Lord Chamberlain
Lord Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is one of the chief officers of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom and is to be distinguished from the Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the Great Officers of State....
's ban on public performances of the play (though the censor
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
still insisted that what he considered to be blasphemous
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
references to Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
, the Virgin, the Immaculate Conception
Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, according to which the Virgin Mary was conceived without any stain of original sin. It is one of the four dogmata in Roman Catholic Mariology...
and Saint Theresa be cut, along with the failed revolutionary Roger's castration near the end of the play). It featured Selma Vaz Dias as Irma and Hazel Penwarden as Chantal. Genet himself participated in the theatrics during the opening-night performance when he accused Zadek of the "attempted murder" of his play and attempted to obstruct the performance physically, though police officers prevented him from entering the theatre. Genet objected to what he called its "Folies Bergères
Folies Bergères
The Folies Bergère established in 1869 in Paris, France, is a music hall which was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s through the 1920s. the institution is still in business.-History:...
"-style mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
. The production was well-received for the most part. Two years later in 1959 the play was produced at the Schlosspark-theater in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
under the direction of Hans Lietzau
Hans Lietzau
Hans Lietzau was a German theatre director, actor, and producer. He was born in Berlin, Germany. In 1953 he directed Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers, with Ernst Schröder as Karl Moor. From 1969 to 1970 he was the theatre manager of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg...
. This production utilised a colour TV set for Irma's surveillance and switchboard machine.
1960s
The first New YorkNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
production opened Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
in a theatre in the round
Theatre in the round
Theatre-in-the-round or arena theatre is any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area...
production at the Circle in the Square theatre on 3 March 1960. This production was directed by José Quintero
José Quintero
José Benjamin Quintero was a Panamanian theatre director, producer and pedagogue best known for his interpretations of the works of Eugene O'Neill.-Early years:...
, who shortened the text considerably, and featured Nancy Marchand
Nancy Marchand
Nancy Marchand was an American actress, whose career encompassed both stage and screen. She appeared in various theatre productions throughout the early 1950s, before being offered roles on film and television....
as Irma (who was later replaced by Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant garde theatrical performances in the 1960s-80s. Hall was nominated in 1964 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana...
), Roy Poole as the Chief of Police, Betty Miller
Betty Miller
Betty Miller was a Jewish author of both literary fiction and non-fiction. She wrote her first novel, The Mere Living , whilst studying journalism at University College London...
as Carmen, Jock Livingston as the Envoy, Arthur Malet
Arthur Malet
Arthur Malet is an English actor.Arthur Malet was born in Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire, England in 1927. He emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, starting out onstage and winning two Drama Desk Awards in 1957. He came to some prominence in the 1960s, starring in films playing characters much...
as the Judge, Sylvia Miles
Sylvia Miles
-Early life and career:Miles was born Sylvia Reuben Lee in New York City, the daughter of Belle and Reuben Lee, a furniture maker....
as Marlyse, and Salome Jens
Salome Jens
Salome Jens is an American stage, film and television actress. She is perhaps best-known for portraying the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.-Life and career:...
as Elyane. The production was very well-received and won the 1960 Obie Award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
s for Genet for Best Foreign Play, for David Hays for its scenic design
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
, and a Distinguished Performance award for both Livingston and Marchand; the production became what was at the time the longest-running Off-Broadway play in history, with 672 performances.
Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
had originally planned to direct the play in 1958 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, until he was forced to postpone when the theatre's artistic director, Simone Berriau, was threatened by the Parisian police. Brook recounts:
Brook eventually directed the play's French première two years later, which opened on 18 May 1960 at the Théâtre du Gymnase
Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell
The Théâtre du Gymnase or Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell, is a theatre in Paris, at 38, boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in the 10th arrondissement .-History:...
in Paris. The production featured Marie Bell
Marie Bell
Marie Bell , born Marie-Jeanne Bellon, was a French tragedian, comic actor and stage director. She was the director of the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris from 1962 onwards, and this theatre now bears her name....
as Irma, Loleh Bellon as Carmen, and Roger Blin
Roger Blin
Roger Blin was a French actor and director notable for directing the first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot....
as the Envoy. Brook designed the sets, which used a revolve
Revolving stage
A revolving stage is a mechanically controlled platform within a theatre that can be rotated in order to speed up the changing of a scene within a show...
for the first few scenes in the brothel. The scene in the café with the revolutionaries was cut and many of Genet's cruder words were omitted because the actresses refused to speak them; Genet objected to both decisions, as well as the use of a revolve. Public reaction to Brook's production was mixed. Lucien Goldmann
Lucien Goldmann
Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...
thought that Brook's naturalistic
Naturalism (theatre)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings Naturalism is a...
decor and acting style (with the exception of Blin and Muselli's performances) obscured the play's "symbolic, universal character" (which an epic
Epic theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...
design
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
, he suggests via a comparison with Mother Courage and Her Children
Mother Courage and Her Children
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin...
, and defamiliarised mode of acting would have foregrounded), while Brook's decision to transform the set only once (dividing the play into a period of order and one of disorder) distorted the play's tripartite structure (of order, disorder, and the re-establishment of order). The production prompted Genet to re-write the play.
Leon Epp directed a production in 1961 at the Volkstheater
Volkstheater, Vienna
The Volkstheater in Vienna was founded in 1889 by request of the citizens of Vienna, amongst them the dramatist Ludwig Anzengruber and the furniture manufacturer Thonet, in order to offer a popular counter weight to the Hofburgtheater...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, which subsequently transferred to Paris. Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
directed a production at the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, which opened on 31 March 1962 with scenic design
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
by Johannes Waltz and music by Aleida Montijn. A production opened in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in November 1966, while Roger Blin
Roger Blin
Roger Blin was a French actor and director notable for directing the first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot....
, who had played the Envoy in Brook's 1960 production, directed the play in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
in April 1967. In Britain, the Oxford Playhouse also produced the play in 1967, under the direction of Minos Volanakis
Minos Volanakis
Minos Volanakis was a Greek theatre director and translator.He studied with Carolos Koun, for whom he translated American plays into Greek, and first made his name for his translations of the dramas of his friend Jean Genet, as well as for productions of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and...
, a friend of Genet's who, working under a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
, also designed the sets. His scenic design utilised Melinex
Polyethylene terephthalate
Polyethylene terephthalate , commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P, is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in synthetic fibers; beverage, food and other liquid containers; thermoforming applications; and engineering resins often in combination...
to create a "a revolving labyrinth of silver foil mirrors."
Victor Garcia
Victor Garcia (director)
Victor Garcia , was an Argentine award-winning theatre director.He directed a production of Jean Genet's The Balcony at the Ruth Escobar Theatre in São Paulo in 1969, which Genet saw in July 1970...
directed a production at the Ruth Escobar Theatre in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
in 1969, which Genet saw in July 1970. The production was staged under the new regime of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
's military dictator General Garrastazu Médici
Emílio Garrastazu Médici
Emílio Garrastazu Médici, was a Brazilian military leader and politician. His rightist rule from 1969 to 1974, marked the apex of military governments in Brazil.-Early life:...
; the actress who played Chantal, Nilda Maria, was arrested for anti-government activities and her children were sent to Public Welfare, prompting Genet to petition the wife of the city's governor for their release. In Garcia's production, the audience observed the action from vertiginous balconies overlooking a pierced 65' plastic and steel tunnel; the actors performed on platforms within the tunnel, or clinging to its sides, or on the metal ladders that led from one platform to another, creating the impression of animals driven insane within the cages of a zoo. The aim, Garcia explained, was to make the public feel as though it was suspended in a void, with "nothing in front of it nor behind it, only precipices." It won 13 critics' awards in the country and ran for 20 months. As already mentioned, Garcia's boldness and endeavour led to the arrival of Jean Genet to Brazil in 1970, that considered this production the best montage of his text — making it an international reference to the genetians studies.
Antoine Bourseiller directed the play twice, in Marseilles in 1969 and Paris in 1975. Genet saw Bourseiller's first production in February 1969, which set the scenes with the revolutionaries inside Irma's brothel and cast non-actors in the leading roles, including Bourseiller's wife, Chantal Darget, as Irma. Writing to the cast, Genet advised: "You can break it [the play] into pieces and then glue them back together, but make sure that it holds together." Genet wrote many letters at that time to Bourseiller about the art of acting.
1970s
The Royal Shakespeare CompanyRoyal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
staged the play at the Aldwych Theatre
Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200.-Origins:...
, London, opening on 25 November 1971 with Brenda Bruce
Brenda Bruce
Brenda Bruce was a British actress. She had a long and successful career in the theatre, radio, film, and television.-Early life:Brenda Bruce was born in Manchester...
as Irma, Estelle Kohler
Estelle Kohler
Estelle Kohler is a British theatre and television actress. Born in South Africa, Kohler made a name for herself as a Shakespearean actor in England...
as Carmen, and Barry Stanton as the Chief of Police; its director was Terry Hands
Terry Hands
Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...
and its designer was Farrah. The RSC premièred another production, with the same director and designer, on 9 July 1987 at the Barbican Theatre, in a translation by Barbara Wright and Terry Hands. Dilys Laye
Dilys Laye
Dilys Laye was an English actress and screenwriter, best known for comedy roles. She died of cancer aged 74.- Early life :...
played Irma, Kathryn Pogson
Kathryn Pogson
Kathryn Pogson is a film and stage actress. She appeared in Terry Gilliam's 1985 cult film Brazil. She received a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance in the 1986 New York production of Aunt Dan and Lemon....
played Carmen, and Joe Melia
Joe Melia
-Films:* Too Many Crooks * Follow a Star * The Intelligence Men * Four in the Morning * Modesty Blaise * Oh! What a Lovely War * Antony and Cleopatra * Sweeney!...
played the Chief of Police in this production. On both occasions the RSC performed a version of the play that incorporated scenes and elements from Genet's texts of 1956 and 1960 that do not appear in the French edition of 1962. This version was also used in a production at the Abbey Theatre in New York, which opened on 4 December 1976 and featured Karen Sunde as Irma, Ara Watson as Carmen (later replaced by Carol Fleming), Tom Donaldson as the Chief of Police, and Christopher Martin as the Envoy.
Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler was an Italian opera and theatre director.-Biography:Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste to an Austrian father and a Franco-Slovene mother; he grew up speaking Italian but spoke French well and his German was passable. He became suddenly fatherless at the age of three, his...
directed a production at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
in 1976. Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
directed an "updated" version with The Performance Group
The Performance Group
The Performance Group was a New York City troupe of experimental theater started by Richard Schechner in 1967. TPG's home base was the Performing Garage in the SoHo district...
in New York in 1979. He transformed the revolution into another fantasy staged in the brothel (as Bourseiller had done ten years earlier in Marseilles) and made Roger shoot Chantel when he realises that she still belongs to the brothel.
1980s
The Balcony was the first play by Genet that the Comédie-FrançaiseComédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
staged, although he neither attended rehearsals nor saw it performed there; the production opened on 14 December 1985, under the direction of Georges Lavaudant.
JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
directed the play in a translation by Jean-Claude van Itallie at the American Repertory Theater (on their Loeb Stage) in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, which opened on 15 January 1986, with choreography by Johanna Boyce, sets by George Tsypin
George Tsypin
George Tsypin is an American sculptor, architect and stage designer .-Early life and education:...
and music by Ruben Blades
Rubén Blades
Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna is a Panamanian salsa singer, songwriter, lawyer, actor, Latin jazz musician, and politician, performing musically most often in the Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz genres...
. Akalaitis set the play in a Central American republic and added a "Marcos
Subcomandante Marcos
Subcomandante Marcos is the spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation , a Mexican rebel movement. In January 1994, he led an army of Mayan farmers into the eastern parts of the Mexican state of Chiapas protesting against the Mexican government's treatment of indigenous...
"-figure (played by Tim McDonough) as the leader of the revolutionaries. Joan MacIntosh played Irma, Diane D'Aquila
Diane D'Aquila
Diane D'Aquila is an United States-born Canada-based actor. She has appeared in both television and film roles, but is best-known for her stage appearances at the Stratford Festival. She originated the role of Elizabeth I of England in Timothy Findley's play, Elizabeth Rex...
played Carmen, Harry S. Murphy played the Chief of Police, and Jeremy Geidt played the Envoy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1981
`The Balcony` performed with a multi-racial and multi-national cast by Internationalist Theatre (founded by Angelique Rockas) at London`s Theatre Space.Directed by Patrick Keeley and designed by Ann Hubbard. This had been a long awaited production as news of a new concept of theatre of performing great European classics with multi-racial casting had been announced in the Stage and Television Today on April 9 , 1981.Ellen Thomas played Irma and Angelique Rockas Carmen. The French actor Yves Aubert was interviewed at length by the BBC French Language Service. Emminent people who saw this performance were the great film director Nicholas Roeg and his actress wife Teresa Russell.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1990s
Geoffrey ShermanGeoffrey Sherman
Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Collingwood Sherman was a Royal Marines officer, who as Chief-of-Staff to Lieutenant-General Boy Browning, organised the ceremony of the Japanese surrender of Singapore on 12 September 1945...
directed a production at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York in 1990. Angela Sargeant played Irma, Freda Foh Shen
Freda Foh Shen
Freda Foh Shen is an Asian American theatre, film and television actress.In 1990 she played Carmen in Jean Genet's play The Balcony at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York....
played Carmen, Sharon Washington played the Envoy, and Will Rhys played the Chief of Police, while Paul Wonsek designed the sets and lighting. The Jean Cocteau Repertory company produced the play at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre
Bouwerie Lane Theatre
The Bouwerie Lane Theatre is a former bank building which became an Off-Broadway theatre, located at 330 Bowery at Bond Street in Manhattan, New York City....
in New York in 1999. Eve Adamson directed and designed the lighting, while Robert Klingelhoffer designed the sets. Elise Stone played Irma, Craig Smith played the Chief of Police, and Jason Crowl played the Envoy.
2000s
Sébastien Rajon directed the play at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, opening on 11 May 2005. Patrick Burnier designed the sets and Michel Fau played Irma, Frédéric Jessau played the Chief of Police, Xavier Couleau played the Envoy, and Marjorie de Larquier played Carmen. The director performed the role of the slave.Analysis and criticism
The philosopher Lucien GoldmannLucien Goldmann
Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...
suggests that the themes
Theme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
of The Balcony may be divided between those that are essential and primary and those that are non-essential and secondary. Those that we may recognise from Genet's earlier work—the double, the mirror, sexuality, dream-death vs. reality-impure life—belong to the secondary level, he argues, while the play's essential theme is a clear and comprehensible analysis of the transformation of industrial society
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced...
into a technocracy
Technocracy (bureaucratic)
Technocracy is a form of government where technical experts are in control of decision making in their respective fields. Economists, engineers, scientists, health professionals, and those who have knowledge, expertise or skills would compose the governing body...
. Genet relates the experiences of his characters "to the great political and social upheavals of the twentieth century," Goldmann argues, particularly important among which is "the collapse of the tremendous hopes for revolution
Proletarian revolution
A proletarian revolution is a social and/or political revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists, and most anarchists....
." He discerns in the play's dramatic structure
Dramatic structure
Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics...
a balance of three equal movements—"established order, threat to order, and order again re-established." The first section of the play dramatises the way in which the prestigious images of the established order—the Bishop, the Judge, the General—belie the actual bearers of power in modern society:
Irma and the Chief of Police "possess the real power," Goldmann points out; they "represent the two essential aspects of technocracy: the organization of an enterprise
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and the power of the State
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
." Consequently, the Chief of Police's dilemma dramatises the historical process of "the growth in prestige of the technicians of repression in the consciousness of the great masses of people."
The subject of the play is the transformation by means of which "the Chief of Police comes to be part of the fantasies of power of the people who do not possess it." This process is borne by Roger, the revolutionary leader whose downfall forms part of the third section:
To the extent that "realism" is understood as "the effort to bring to light the essential relationships that at a particular moment govern both the development of the whole of social relation
Social relation
In social science, a social relation or social interaction refers to a relationship between two , three or more individuals . Social relations, derived from individual agency, form the basis of the social structure. To this extent social relations are always the basic object of analysis for social...
s and—through the latter—the development of individual destinies and the psychological life of individuals," Goldmann argues that The Balcony has a realist structure and characterises Genet as "a very great realist author":
While Goldmann detects an "extremely strong" Brechtian
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
influence in The Balcony, Carol Rosen characterises Genet's dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...
as "Artaudian
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
." "Just as Mme. Irma's brothel is the intangible shadow of a real social phenomenon," she suggests, "her closet drama
Closet drama
A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.-Form:...
s are the Artaudian double of their impotent bases in truth." Rosen reads Irma's brothel as "a metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
construct in a discussion play about the value of mimetic
Mimesis
Mimesis , from μιμεῖσθαι , "to imitate," from μῖμος , "imitator, actor") is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the...
ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
, the transcendence
Transcendence (religion)
In religion transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature which is wholly independent of the physical universe. This is contrasted with immanence where God is fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways...
possible in play
Play (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
, and the magical efficacy
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
of the theater
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
itself"; it is "more than a naturalistically
Naturalism (theatre)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings Naturalism is a...
ordered stage brothel; it is more than real; it expresses conflicting ideas with the erotic nuances of a dream
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
." In line with Genet's interest in Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music is a 19th-century work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism ...
(1872), Rosen aligns the development of Irma's relationship to the audience with the mythic narrative of Dionysos
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
toying with Pentheus
Pentheus
In Greek mythology, Pentheus was a king of Thebes, son of the strongest of the Spartes, Echion, and of Agave, daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia....
in Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
' tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
The Bacchae
The Bacchae
The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, during his final years in Macedon, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which...
(405 BCE). In contrast to Goldmann's analysis of the play as an epic
Epic theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...
defamiliarisation of the historical rise of technocracy, Rosen sees The Balcony as a theatre of cruelty
Theatre of Cruelty
The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
staging of "a mythic dimension to the dark side of the human soul." Like Goldmann, J. L. Styan, too, detects the influence of Brechtian defamiliarisation in the play, which he reads as a "political examination of how man chooses his role in society." Styan argues that—despite the symbolism of evil and the sensational, emotionally-disturbing staging of the secret desires of its audience—there is in Genet's theatre "a sharp intellectual edge, a shocking clear-headedness" that "links him more with Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
than with Artaud."
Genet's theatre, the editors of Jean Genet: Performance and Politics argue, stages an interrogation and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
of "the value and status of the theatrical frame itself." Postmodern performance, though, provides the most appropriate frame of reference for understanding it, they suggest. They observe that, in common with his other late dramas, The Blacks
The Blacks (play)
The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....
(1959) and The Screens
The Screens
The Screens is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Its first few productions all used abridged versions, beginning with its world premiere under Hans Lietzau's direction in Berlin in May 1961...
(1964), The Balconys exploration of explosive political issues appears to contradict its author's calls for a "non-historical, mythical stage." They interpret The Balcony as an examination of "how revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
s are appropriated
Appropriation (economics)
Appropriation is a non-violent process by which previously unowned natural resources, particularly land, become the property of a person or group of persons. The term is widely used in economics in this sense...
through mass-media manipulation
Media manipulation
Media manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding...
." Taking their cue from Genet's note on the play from 1960, they conclude that Genet felt that "conventional political theatre
Political theatre
In the history of theatre, there is long tradition of performances addressing issues of current events and central to society itself, encouraging consciousness and social change. The political satire performed by the comic poets at the theatres, had considerable influence on public opinion in the...
too often indulges the spectator by depicting the revolution as having already happened. Instead of encouraging the audience to change the world, it acts as a safety valve, and thus works to support the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
." His is a form of political theatre that is "neither didactic
Lehrstücke
The Lehrstücke are a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The Lehrstücke stem from Brecht's Epic Theatre techniques but as a core principle explore the possibilities of learning through acting,...
nor based on realism"; instead, it fuses the metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
or sacred
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
and the political and constitutes the most successful articulation to date of "post-modernist performance and Brechtian critical theatre
Epic theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...
." It "shows us that performance is not divorced from reality," they suggest, but rather that it is "productive of reality."
Adaptations
In November 1961, Genet met the American film directorFilm director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Joseph Strick
Joseph Strick
Joseph Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strick briefly attended UCLA before enrolling in the Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach...
, with whom he agreed to a cinematic adaption of the play. The film version of The Balcony
The Balcony (film)
The Balcony is a 1963 cinematic adaptation of Jean Genet's play The Balcony, directed by Joseph Strick. It starred Shelley Winters, Peter Falk, Lee Grant and Leonard Nimoy. George J. Folsey was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Ben Maddow was nominated for a Writers Guild of...
was released in 1963
1963 in film
The year 1963 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* June 12 - Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City....
, directed by Strick. It starred Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
, Peter Falk
Peter Falk
Peter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...
, Lee Grant
Lee Grant
Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...
and Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....
. The film garnered nominations for George J. Folsey
George J. Folsey
George J. Folsey, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who worked on 162 films between 1919 and his retirement in 1976....
for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
and for Ben Maddow
Ben Maddow
Ben Maddow was a prolific screenwriter and documentarian from the 1930s through the 70s. Educated at Columbia University, Maddow began his career working within the American documentary movement in the 30s.In 1936 he co-founded the short-lived left-wing newsreel The World Today...
for a Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
award.
Robert DiDomenica composed an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic version of the play in 1972, though it did not receive its première until Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell was a notable American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director of opera.- Life :Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old...
of the Opera Company of Boston
Opera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
produced it in 1990. Having seen the New York production of the play in 1960, DiDomenica based his libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
on Bernard Frechtman's revised translation of 1966, though he did not acquire the rights to do so until shortly before Genet's death, in 1986. A reviewer for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
found the production "a wonderfully intelligent construct, overlaid with a lyrical and dramatic sensibility that makes searing emotional contact at many crucial points." Mignon Dunn played Irma and Susan Larson
Susan Larson
Susan Larson is an American soprano opera singer. Larson was born in New Rochelle, New York and she graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University in 1965. She received a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory in 1969....
played Carmen.
In 2001/02, the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös
Peter Eötvös
Péter Eötvös is a Hungarian composer and conductor.Eötvös was born in Odorheiu Secuiesc/Székelyudvarhely, Szeklerland, Transylvania . He studied composition in Budapest and Cologne. From 1962, he composed for film in Hungary. Eötvös played regularly with the Stockhausen Ensemble between 1968 and...
created an opera based on the French version of the play. It was staged for the first time at the Festival d'Aix en Provence on 5 July 2002.
Sources
- Atkinson, Brooks. 1960. "Work by Genet Opens at Circle in Square." The New York Times March 4, 1960. 21. Available online.
- Brook, PeterPeter BrookPeter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
. 1987. The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration, 1946-1987. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413612809. - Bruckner, D. J. R. 1999. "Untangling Genet's Puzzle Of Power, Lost and Found." The New York Times Friday November 19, 1999. Available online.
- Chapman, Don. 2008. Oxford Playhouse: High and Low Drama in a University City. Hatfield: U of Hertfordshire P. ISBN 1902806875.
- Dichy, Albert. 1993. "Chronology." In White (1993, xiii-xxxv).
- Genet, JeanJean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
. 1960. "Note." In Wright and Hands (1991, xiv). - ---. 1962. "How To Perform The Balcony." In Wright and Hands (1991, xi-xiii).
- Goldmann, LucienLucien GoldmannLucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...
. 1960. "Genet's The Balcony: A Realist Play." Trans. Robert Sayre. Praxis: A Journal of Radical Perspectives on the Arts 4 (1978): 123-131. Trans. of "Une Pièce réaliste: Le Balcon de Genet" in Les Temps Modernes 171 (June 1960). - Gussow, MelMel GussowMelvyn H. Gussow was an American theater critic, movie critic, and author who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.-Biography:...
. 1990. "Balcony: The Fantasy Within a Fantasy." The New York Times April 9, 1990. Available online. - Holmberg, Arthur. 1986. Review. Performing Arts Journal 10.1: 43-46.
- Lavery, Carl, Clare Finburgh, and Maria Shevtsova, eds. 2006. Jean Genet: Performance and Politics. Baisingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403994803.
- Mostaço, Edelcio. O Balcão. Palco e Platéia, São Paulo, year 1, nº. 4, December 1986.
- Oestreich, James R. 1990. "Jean Genet's Balcony Makes Debut as Opera." The New York Times June 17, 1990. Available online.
- Oswald, Laura. 1989. Jean Genet and the Semiotics of Performance. Advances in Semiotics ser. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. ISBN 0253331528.
- Rich, Frank. 1986. Review. The New York Times Thursday January 23, 1986. Available online.
- Rosen, Carol. 1992. "The Structure of Illusion in Genet's The Balcony." Modern Drama 35.4 (December): 513-519.
- Savona, Jeannette L. 1983. Jean Genet. Grove Press Modern Dramatists ser. New York: Grove P. ISBN 0394620453.
- Styan, J. L. 1981. Symbolism, Surrealism and the Absurd. Vol. 2 of Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521296293.
- White, EdmundEdmund WhiteEdmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
. 1993. Genet. Corrected edition. London: Picador, 1994. ISBN 0330306227. - Willett, JohnJohn WillettJohn Willett was a British translator and a scholar who is remembered for translating the work of Bertolt Brecht into English.-Early life:Willett was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford...
. 1978. The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics in the Theatre. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413378101. - Wright, BarbaraBarbara WrightBarbara Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.Wright, born in Worthing, studied music and art in Paris in the years before World War II...
and Terry HandsTerry HandsTerence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...
, trans. 1991. The Balcony. By Jean Genet. London and Boston: Faber. ISBN 0571152465.