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.Savona (1983, 79).
Since Peter Zadek directed the first English-language production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has been revived frequently (in various versions) and has attracted many prominent directors, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and JoAnne Akalaitis.Savona (1983, 71–72) and Lavery, Finburgh, and Shevtsova (2006, 12). 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.Savona (1983, 76). Genet suggested that the play should be performed as a "glorification of the Image and the Reflection."Genet (1962, xiii).
Genet's biographer Edmund White wrote that with The Balcony, along with The Blacks (1959), Genet re-invented modern theatre.White (1993, 524). 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."Lacan in L'Âne (July–August 1983); see White (1993, 485). Goldmann (1960, 130). Martin Esslin has called The Balcony "one of the masterpieces of our time."Esslin, quoted in Savona (1983, 73).
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."Rosen (1992, 516). 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.For the term "house of illusions" as the traditional term in French for a brothel, see Styan (1981, 149).
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 Luke Mark Wounded Man
Textual history The Balcony exists in three distinct versions, published in French in 1956, 1960, and 1962.Savona (1983, 70–71). 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.Savona (1983, 71). 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.Wright and Hands (1991, vii).
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.Dichy (1993, xxiii). 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.White (1993, 475). 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.White (1993, 477). 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."White (1993, 478).
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).Dichy (1993, 23) and White (1993, 467). Genet dedicated this version to Pierre Joly, a young actor and Genet's lover at the time.White (1993, 474). 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.Dichy (1993, xxv). 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.Dichy (1993, xxv) and White (1993, 424, 528).
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."Genet (1962, xi). 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 (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).Dichy (1993, xxiv) and White (1993, 481). It featured Selma Vaz Dias as Irma and Hazel Penwarden as Chantal.Styan (1981, 149). 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.Dichy (1993, xxiv). 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.White (1993, 486) and the production's article in the Internet Off-Broadway Database website . This production was directed by José Quintero, who shortened the text considerably, and featured Nancy Marchand as Irma (who was 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.White (1993, 486), Atkinson (1960, 21), and the production's article in the Internet Off-Broadway Database website . 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.White (1993, 525). 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.Savona (1983, 71–72). Public reaction to Brook's production was mixed.Dichy (1993, xxv). 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).Goldmann (1960, 129–130). 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.Savona (1983, 72). 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.Savona (1983, 72) and Willett (1978, 35). 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.Savona (1983, 72) and White (1993, 570). 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.Chapman (2008, 196–197) and White (1993, 523). Chapman describes this 1967 production as "the first public airing in Britain" of the play, presumably because the play's première in London ten years earlier was presented by a private "theatre club" in an attempt to avoid censorship. Volanakis, a Greek-born director, also directed the US première of Genet's The Screens. While Chapman spells the director's name "Volanakis", White spells it as "Volonakis." His scenic design utilised Melinex to create a "a revolving labyrinth of silver foil mirrors."Ronald Bryden, quoted by Chapman (2008, 197).