The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre

The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre PDF Author: Carl Lavery
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526130408
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
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.

The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre

The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre PDF Author: Carl Lavery
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526130408
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

The Screens

The Screens PDF Author: Jean Genet
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802194311
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of The Balcony: “A play of epic range, of original and devastating theatrical effect...a tidal wave of total theater” (Jack Kroll, Newsweek). Jean Genet was one of the world’s greatest contemporary dramatists, and his last play, The Screens, is his crowning achievement. It strikes a powerful, closing chord to the formidable theatrical work that began with Deathwatch and continued, with even bolder variations, in The Maids, The Balcony, and The Blacks. A philosophical satire of colonization, military power, and morality itself, The Screens is an epic tale of despicable outcasts whose very hatefulness becomes a galvanizing force of rebellion during the Algerian War. The play’s cast of over fifty characters moves through seventeen scenes, the world of the living breaching the world of the dead by means of shifting the screens—the only scenery—in a brilliant tour de force of spectacle and drama.

Reflections on the Theatre

Reflections on the Theatre PDF Author: Jean Genet
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571255788
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
The 1966 staging in Paris of Jean Genet's The Screens by the Jean-Louis Barrault-Madeleine Renaud Company was highly controversial. Written at the height of the Algerian War, it was initially considered un-performable in France due to the violent political reactions it was bound to arouse. The Barrault-Renaud production was directed by the venerable Roger Blin, and during the several months of rehearsals that Genet attended he wrote a series of letters and notes to Blin giving his views on every aspect of the staging. His comments deal with the details of that play and that production, but also transcend them, amounting to a precise and fascinating compilation of Jean Genet's concept of the theatre. This volume also contains two essays by Genet, originally published in the French periodical Un Tel, giving his striking and highly personal views on life and art.

The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet

The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet PDF Author: Gene A. Plunka
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838634615
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
"In this book, Gene A. Plunka argues that the most important single element that solidifies all of Genet's work is the concept of metamorphosis. Genet's plays and prose demonstrate the transition from game playing to the establishment of one's identity through a state of risk taking that develops from solitude. However, risk taking per se is not as important as the rite of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner's work in ethnography is used as a focal point for the examination of rites of passage in Genet's dramas." "Rejecting society, Genet has allied himself with peripheral groups, marginal men, and outcasts--scapegoats who lack power in society. Much of their effort is spent in revolt or direct opposition in mainstream society that sees them as objects to be abused. As an outcast or marginal man, Genet solved his problem of identity through artistic creation and metamorphosis. Likewise, Genet's protagonists are outcasts searching for positive value in a society over which they have no control; they always appear to be the victims or scapegoats. As outcasts, Genet's protagonists establish their identities by first willing their actions and being proud to do so." "Unfortunately, man's sense of Being is constantly undermined by society and the way individuals react to roles, norms, and values. Roles are the products of carefully defined and codified years of positively sanctioned institutional behavior. According to Genet, role playing limits individual freedom, stifles creativity, and impedes differentiation. Genet equates role playing with stagnant bourgeois society that imitates rather than invents; the latter is a word Genet often uses to urge his protagonists into a state of productive metamorphosis. Imitation versus invention is the underlying dialectic between bourgeois society and outcasts that is omnipresent in virtually all of Genet's works." "Faced with rejection, poverty, oppression, and degradation, Genet's outcasts often escape their horrible predicaments by living in a world of illusion that consists of ceremony, game playing, narcissism, sexual and secret rites, or political charades. Like children, Genet's ostracized individuals play games to imitate a world that they can not enter. Essentially, the play acting becomes catharsis for an oppressed group that is otherwise confined to the lower stratum of society." "Role players and outcasts who try to find an identity through cathartic game playing never realize their potential in Genet's world. Instead, Genet is interested in outcasts who immerse themselves in solitude and create their own sense of dignity free from external control. Most important, these isolated individuals may initially play games, yet they ultimately experience metamorphosis from a world of rites, charades, and rituals to a type of "sainthood" where dignity and nobility reign. The apotheosis is achieved through a distinct act of conscious revolt designed to condemn the risk taker to a degraded life of solitude totally distinct from society's norms and values." --Book Jacket.

Jean Genet

Jean Genet PDF Author: David Bradby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134188269
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book is the only introductory text to Genet in English, offering an overview of this key figure in defining and understanding twentieth-century theatre. The authors provide a comprehensive account of Genet's key plays and productions, his early life and his writing for and beyond the theatre.

The Theatre of Jean Genet

The Theatre of Jean Genet PDF Author: Gilbert Leslie Muchmore
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dramaturge, Frans
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description


Prisoner of Love

Prisoner of Love PDF Author: Jean Genet
Publisher: Wesleyan
ISBN: 9780819562746
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Written on the author's deathbed, this personal account of the plight of the Palestinians offers a unique viewpoint on the continuing Mideast conflict.

Selected Writings Of Jean Genet

Selected Writings Of Jean Genet PDF Author: Jean Genet
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0880014202
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Excerpts from the novels, plays, and poems of the French convict, prostitute, and literary artist join notes from his film, The Penal Colony, letters, essays, and a rare interview, all edited by a contemporary biographer.

Contemporary British Theatre

Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: V. Angelaki
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137010134
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
This edited collection brings together a team of internationally prominent academics and delivers cutting-edge discourse on the strongly emerging tradition of experimentation in contemporary British theatre - redefining what the dramatic stands for today. Each chapter of the collection focuses on influential contemporary plays and playwrights.

Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd

Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd PDF Author: Carl Lavery
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147250576X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd is an innovative collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of theatre, performance and eco-criticism, which reconfigures absurdist theatre through the optics of ecology and environment. As well as offering strikingly new interpretations of the work of canonical playwrights such as Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, Adamov, Albee, Kafka, Pinter, Shepard and Churchill, the book playfully mimics the structure of Martin Esslin's classic text The Theatre of the Absurd, which is commonly recognised as one of the most important scholarly publications of the 20th century. By reading absurdist drama, for the first time, as an emergent form of ecological theatre, Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd interrogates afresh the very meaning of absurdism for 21st-century audiences, while at the same time making a significant contribution to the development of theatre and performance studies as a whole. The collection's interdisciplinary approach, accessibility, and ecological focus will appeal to students and academics in a number of different fields, including theatre, performance, English, French, geography and philosophy. It will also have a major impact on the new cross disciplinary paradigm of eco-criticism.