The Balcony


The Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean 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 the establishment under threat outside.
Since Peter Zadek directed the first English-language production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has been revived frequently and has attracted many prominent directors, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and JoAnne Akalaitis. It has been adapted as a film and given operatic treatment. 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 should be performed as a "glorification of the Image and the Reflection."
Genet's biographer Edmund White wrote that with The Balcony, along with The Blacks, 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."

Synopsis

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." 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 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.

Characters

  • Irma
  • Carmen
  • Chief of Police
  • Court Envoy
  • Torturer
  • Bishop
  • Judge
  • General
  • Bishop's Girl
  • Thief
  • General's Girl
  • Beggar/Slave
  • Beggar's Girl
  • Blood
  • Tears
  • Sperm
  • Chantal
  • Georgette
  • Roger
  • Armand
  • 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 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. 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 was based on Genet's second version, while Frechtman's second, revised English translation 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, 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 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. 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, 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.

Production history

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 London 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. 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, but police officers prevented him from entering the theatre. Genet objected to what he called its "Folies Bergère"-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.

1960s

The first New York production opened Off-Broadway in a theatre in the round production at the Circle in the Square Downtown on 3 March 1960. This production was directed by José Quintero, who shortened the text considerably, and featured Nancy Marchand as Irma, 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 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.
Peter Brook had 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 obscured the play's "symbolic, universal character", while Brook's decision to transform the set only once distorted the play's tripartite structure. 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 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 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.