The Balcony (French:Le Balcon) is aplay by theFrenchdramatistJean Genet. It is 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 theestablishment under threat outside.[1]
SincePeter Zadek directed the first English-language production at theArts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has been revived frequently (in various versions) and has attracted many prominent directors, includingPeter Brook,Erwin Piscator,Roger Blin,Giorgio Strehler, andJoAnne Akalaitis.[2] It has beenadapted as a film and given operatic treatment. The play'sdramatic structure integrates Genet's concern withmeta-theatricality androle-playing, and consists of two central strands: a political conflict between revolution andcounter-revolution and a philosophical one between reality and illusion.[3] Genet suggested that the play should be performed as a "glorification of the Image and the Reflection."[4]
Genet's biographerEdmund White wrote that withThe Balcony, along withThe Blacks (1959), Genet re-invented modern theatre.[5] The psychoanalystJacques Lacan described the play as the rebirth of the spirit of theclassical Athenian comic playwrightAristophanes, while the philosopherLucien Goldmann argued that despite its "entirely different world view" it constitutes "the first greatBrechtian play in French literature."[6]Martin Esslin has calledThe Balcony "one of the masterpieces of our time."[7]
Most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel in which its madam, Irma, "casts, directs, and co-ordinates performances in a house of infinite mirrors and theaters."[8] 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 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.[9]
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The Balcony exists in three distinct versions, published in French in 1956, 1960, and 1962.[10] The first version consists of two acts of fifteen scenes and includes a dream sequence 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 abruptly shot.[11] The second version is the longest and most political.[11] The third version is shorter and reduces the political content of the scene with the café revolutionaries.[11] 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.[11] A translation byBarbara Wright andTerry Hands, which theRSC used in its 1987 production, incorporates scenes and elements from all three versions.[12]
Genet wrote the first version of the play between January and September 1955, during which time he also wroteThe Blacks and re-worked his screenplayThe Penal Colony.[13] Immediately afterwards, in October and November the same year, he wroteHer, a posthumously published one-act play about the pope, which is related toThe Balcony.[14] Genet took his initial inspiration forThe Balcony fromFranco's Spain, explaining in a 1957 article that:
My point of departure was situated in Spain, Franco's Spain, and the revolutionary whocastrates himself was all thoseRepublicans when they had admitted their defeat. And then my play continued to grow in its own direction and Spain in another.[15]
Genet was particularly interested at the time in newspaper reports of two projects for massive tombs: theCaudillo's own colossal memorial near Madrid, theValle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen"), where he was buried in 1975, and the projected mausoleum ofAga Khan III in Aswan, Egypt.[16] 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.[16] The meditations on the contrast between Being and Doing that the Bishop articulates in the first scene recall the "two irreducible systems of values" thatJean-Paul Sartre suggested inSaint Genet (1952) Genet "uses simultaneously to think about the world."[17]
Marc Barbezat's company L'Arbalète published the first version ofThe Balcony in June 1956; the artistAlberto 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).[18] Genet dedicated this version to Pierre Joly, a young actor and Genet's lover at the time.[19] 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 ofPeter Brook.[20] He worked on the third version between April and October 1961, during which time he also readFriedrich Nietzsche'sThe Birth of Tragedy (1872), a work ofdramatic theory that was to become one of Genet's favourite books and a formative influence on his ideas about the role ofmyth andritual in post-realist theatre.[21]
In a note of 1962, Genet writes that: "In London, at theArts Theatre, I saw for myself thatThe Balcony was badly acted. It was equally badly acted in New York, Berlin and Paris – so I was told."[22] The play received its world première in London on 22 April 1957, in a production directed byPeter Zadek at theArts Theatre Club, a "private theatre club" that enabled the production to circumvent theLord Chamberlain's ban on public performances of the play (though the censor still insisted that what he considered to be blasphemous references to Christ, theVirgin, theImmaculate Conception andSaint Theresa be cut, along with the failed revolutionary Roger's castration near the end of the play).[23] It featuredSelma Vaz Dias as Irma and Hazel Penwarden as Chantal.[24] 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, but police officers prevented him from entering the theatre.[25] Genet objected to what he called its "Folies Bergère"-style mise en scène.[11] The production was well-received for the most part.[11] Two years later in 1959 the play was produced at the Schlosspark-Theater in Berlin under the direction ofHans Lietzau.[11] This production utilised a colour TV set for Irma's surveillance and switchboard machine.[11]
The first New York production openedOff-Broadway in atheatre in the round production at theCircle in the Square Downtown on 3 March 1960.[26] This production was directed byJosé Quintero, who shortened the text considerably, and featuredNancy Marchand as Irma (who was replaced byGrayson 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, andSalome Jens as Elyane.[27] The production was very well-received and won the 1960Obie Awards 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.[26]
Peter Brook had planned to direct the play in 1958 at theThéâtre 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:
For while she was with the police, a hand beckoned her into an inner room and she was told, off the record, that if she proceeded with this play, a riot would be organized (by the police, naturally!) and the theatre would be closed. This incidentally was a play that had run in London without scandal, but as it showed a priest and a general in a brothel it was more than the French could take.[28]
Brook eventually directed the play's French première two years later, which opened on 18 May 1960 at theThéâtre du Gymnase in Paris.[29] The production featuredMarie Bell as Irma,Loleh Bellon as Carmen, andRoger Blin as the Envoy.[11] Brook designed the sets, which used arevolve for the first few scenes in the brothel.[11] 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.[30] Public reaction to Brook's production was mixed.[20]Lucien Goldmann thought that Brook'snaturalistic 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 withMother Courage and Her Children, anddefamiliarised 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).[31] The production prompted Genet to re-write the play.[20]
Leon Epp directed a production in 1961 at theVolkstheater in Vienna, which subsequently transferred to Paris.[32]Erwin Piscator directed a production at theStädtische Bühnen Frankfurt, which opened on 31 March 1962 with scenic design by Johannes Waltz and music by Aleida Montijn.[33] A production opened in Boston in November 1966, whileRoger Blin, who had played the Envoy in Brook's 1960 production, directed the play in Rotterdam in April 1967.[34] In Britain, theOxford Playhouse also produced the play in 1967, under the direction ofMinos Volanakis, a friend of Genet's who, working under a pseudonym, also designed the sets.[35] His scenic design utilisedMelinex to create a "a revolving labyrinth of silver foil mirrors."[36]
Victor Garcia directed a production at the Ruth Escobar Theatre in São Paulo in 1969, which Genet saw in July 1970.[37] The production was staged under the new regime of Brazil's military dictatorGeneral 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.[38] 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.[38] 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."[38] It won 13 critics' awards in the country and ran for 20 months.[38] 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.[39]
Antoine Bourseiller directed the play twice, in Marseilles in 1969 and Paris in 1975.[40] 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.[41] 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."[42] Genet wrote many letters at that time to Bourseiller about the art of acting.[42]
TheRoyal Shakespeare Company staged the play at theAldwych Theatre, London, opening on 25 November 1971 withBrenda Bruce as Irma,Estelle Kohler as Carmen, and Barry Stanton as the Chief of Police; its director wasTerry Hands and its designer was Farrah.[43] The RSC premièred another production, with the same director and designer, on 9 July 1987 at theBarbican Theatre, in a translation by Barbara Wright and Terry Hands.Dilys Laye played Irma,Kathryn Pogson played Carmen, andJoe Melia played the Chief of Police in this production.[44] 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.[12] 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.[45]
Giorgio Strehler directed a production at thePiccolo Teatro in Milan in 1976.[32]Richard Schechner directed an "updated" version withThe Performance Group in New York in 1979.[32] 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.[46]
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July 1981, London . In the middle of the1981 Brixton riotInternationalist Theatre staged a multi-racial performance of Genet's revolutionary play featuring the Sierra Leonean actressEllen Thomas in the role of Irma,[47]"While the ruling classes, the icons and figureheads fiddle, society burns around them...a comment on power and political manoeuvre" ... thought provoking .."[48] The cast included French actor Yves Aubert as the General[49] andAngelique Rockas as Carmen .
The Finnish Broadcasting Company's (YLE) television theatre produced a television adaptation of the Balcony in 1982, directed by Arto af Hällström and Janne Kuusi.[50]
The Balcony was the first play by Genet that theComédie-Française staged, although he neither attended rehearsals nor saw it performed there; the production opened on 14 December 1985, under the direction of Georges Lavaudant.[51]
JoAnne Akalaitis directed the play in a translation byJean-Claude van Itallie at theAmerican Repertory Theater (on their Loeb Stage) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which opened on 15 January 1986, with choreography by Johanna Boyce, sets byGeorge Tsypin, costume design byKristi Zea and music byRubén Blades.[52] Akalaitis set the play in a Central American republic and added a "Marcos"-figure (played by Tim McDonough) as the leader of the revolutionaries.[53] Joan MacIntosh played Irma,Diane D'Aquila played Carmen, Harry S. Murphy played the Chief of Police, andJeremy Geidt played the Envoy.[54]
Geoffrey Sherman directed a production at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York in 1990.[55] 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.[55] TheJean Cocteau Repertory company produced the play at theBouwerie Lane Theatre in New York in 1999.[56] Eve Adamson directed and designed the lighting, while Robert Klingelhoffer designed the sets.[56] Elise Stone played Irma, Craig Smith played the Chief of Police, and Jason Crowl played the Envoy.[56]
Sébastien Rajon directed the play at theThéâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, opening on 11 May 2005.[57] Patrick Burnier designed the sets andMichel 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.[58]
An audiobook of the production withPatrick Magee,Cyril Cusack andPamela Brown was recorded as an LP by conductorHoward Sackler and released byCaedmon Records in 1967.[59]
The philosopherLucien Goldmann suggests that thethemes ofThe Balcony may be divided between those that are essential and primary and those that are non-essential and secondary.[60] 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 ofindustrial society into atechnocracy.[61] 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 forrevolution."[62] He discerns in the play'sdramatic structure a balance of three equal movements—"established order, threat to order, and order again re-established."[63] 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:
Genet employs the image of a house of ilusions, a brothel, in which, it must however be recalled, sexuality plays almost no role, and in which we are principally shown thedesire for power...The first scenes show us three typical specimens...What is common to their three dreams is that, contrary to what we will later see to be the social reality, they still confuse prestige withpower and identify one with the other.[64]
Irma and the Chief of Police "possess the real power," Goldmann points out; they "represent the two essential aspects of technocracy: the organization of anenterprise and the power of theState."[65] 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."[65]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."[65] This process is borne by Roger, the revolutionary leader whose downfall forms part of the third section:
Roger the plumber comes to the house of illusions—like those who earlier had dreamed of being Judge, Bishop or General—to live out for a few hours his dream of being a technician of power. Yet by doing that, Genet tells us, the revolutionary who dreams of being Chief of Police castrates himself as a revolutionary.[62]
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 ofsocial relations and—through the latter—the development of individual destinies and the psychological life of individuals," Goldmann argues thatThe Balcony has a realist structure and characterises Genet as "a very great realist author":[66]
One may disagree with the lack of hope that prevails in Genet's play. But it would be difficult to deny that it is perfectly realistic insofar as it transposes onto the literary level the fundamental transformations that modern society has undergone over the past forty years, and also that it does this in a particularly clear and comprehensible manner.[67]
While Goldmann detects an "extremely strong"Brechtian influence inThe Balcony, Carol Rosen characterises Genet'sdramaturgy as "Artaudian."[68] "Just as Mme. Irma's brothel is the intangible shadow of a real social phenomenon," she suggests, "hercloset dramas are the Artaudiandouble of their impotent bases in truth."[69] Rosen reads Irma's brothel as "a metaphysical construct in a discussion play about the value ofmimetic ritual, thetranscendence possible in play, and the |magical efficacy of the theater itself"; it is "more than anaturalistically ordered stage brothel; it is more than real; it expresses conflicting ideas with the erotic nuances of a dream."[70] In line with Genet's interest inNietzsche'sThe Birth of Tragedy (1872), Rosen aligns the development of Irma's relationship to the audience with the mythic narrative ofDionysos toying withPentheus inEuripides' tragedyThe Bacchae (405 BCE).[71] In contrast to Goldmann's analysis of the play as an epicdefamiliarisation of the historical rise of technocracy, Rosen seesThe Balcony as atheatre of cruelty staging of "a mythic dimension to the dark side of the human soul."[72] 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."[73] 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 withPirandello than with Artaud."[24]
Genet's theatre, the editors ofJean Genet: Performance and Politics argue, stages an interrogation anddeconstruction of "the value and status of the theatrical frame itself."[74]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) andThe Screens (1964),The Balcony's exploration of explosive political issues appears to contradict its author's calls for a "non-historical, mythical stage."[75] They interpretThe Balcony as an examination of "how revolutions areappropriated through mass-media manipulation."[74] Taking their cue from Genet's note on the play from 1960, they conclude that Genet felt that "conventionalpolitical 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."[74] His is a form of political theatre that is "neitherdidactic nor based onrealism"; instead, it fuses the metaphysical or sacred and the political and constitutes the most successful articulation to date of "post-modernist performance and Brechtiancritical theatre."[76] It "shows us that performance is not divorced from reality," they suggest, but rather that it is "productive of reality."[77]
In November 1961, Genet met the American film directorJoseph Strick, with whom he agreed to a cinematic adaption of the play.[78] Thefilm version ofThe Balcony was released in 1963, directed by Strick. It starredShelley Winters,Peter Falk,Lee Grant andLeonard Nimoy. The film garnered nominations forGeorge J. Folsey for anAcademy Award for Best Cinematography and forBen Maddow for aWriters Guild of America Award.
Robert DiDomenica composed an operatic version of the play in 1972, though it did not receive its première untilSarah Caldwell of theOpera Company of Boston produced it in 1990.[79] Having seen the New York production of the play in 1960, DiDomenica based hislibretto 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.[79] A reviewer forThe 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."[79]Mignon Dunn played Irma andSusan Larson played Carmen.[79]
In 2001/02, the Hungarian composerPeter Eötvös created an opera based on the French version of the play. It was staged for the first time at theFestival d'Aix en Provence on 5 July 2002. It was produced again in 2014 at theThéâtre de l'Athénée, in Paris by the orchestrale balcon.
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