The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre: Spaces of revolution

by Carl Lavery, Maria M. Delgado (Editor), Maggie B. Gale (Editor), Peter Lichtenfels (Editor)

Overview

Jean Genet and the politics of theatre is the first publication to situate the politics of Genet's theatre within the social, spatial and political contexts of France in the 1950s and 1960s. The book's innovative approach departs significantly from existing scholarship on Genet. Where scholars have tended to bracket Genet as either an absurdist, ritualistic or, more recently, a resistant playwright, this study argues that his theory and practice of political theatre have more in common with the affirmative ideas of thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou. By doing so, the monograph positions Genet as a revolutionary playwright, interested in producing progressive forms of democracy. This original and interdisciplinary reading of Genet’s late work will be of interest to students and practitioners of Theatre, as well as those interested in French and History.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719077135
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Series:	Theatre: Theory - Practice - Performance
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Carl Lavery is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Aberystwyth University

Table of Contents

List of figures ix

Acknowledgements x

Part I Politics and aesthetics

Introduction 1

1 Genet and commitment: politics and aesthetics 21

2 Tracing the shift: the event of the wound 49

3 Aesthetic politics: staging the wound 78

Part II Spatial politics in the late plays

4 Exploding the bordello in The Balcony: spectacle, allegory and the wound of theatre 105

5 Détournement, abjection and disidentification in The Blacks 136

6 Bringing it all back home: the battle of The Screens 168

7 Conclusion: Genet our contemporary 195

Part III Interviews

8 Interview with Lluís Pasqual 201

9 Interview with JoAnne Akalaitis 208

10 Interview with Ultz 215

11 Interview with Excalibah 221

Appendix: 'Preface to The Blacks', translated Clare Finburgh 227

References 235

Index 249

Editorial Reviews

Lavery’s brilliant analysis of the political meanings of Genet’s late drama can be understood as paying homage to Genet’s conceptual recedents. Thus does Lavery become part of a unique school of scholars, including Derrida, whose theoretical work reflects mimetically and matches the complexity of Genet’s own theorizing.

From the Publisher