In 1957, French dramatist Jean Genet brought existential philosophy and absurdest theatre together in what eventually culminated in one of his most famous plays: The Balcony.
Set in an upscale brothel, the play follows a group of people living out their fantasies while a revolution rages outside in the city streets. The reader is introduced to the madam of the brothel, her assistants, and various clientele of particular tastes.
One of these clientele is a man who dresses like a priest and seeks penitence, another is a man who pretends to be a judge and doles out heavy-handed punishment on a thief, yet another is a man who imagines himself as a general, galloping about on his horse.
Meanwhile, the city begins to fall block by block. The prostitutes and madam wait for the chief of police while these men act out their fantasies.
If you read this at face value, you will probably think the play is funny and presents a good joke or two, but as soon as you begin probing the text, you find the real treat of the play.
Through the three men acting on their fantasies, Genet explores the dynamics of power, using the brothel as a trope for the failed and corrupt government within the play.
The “bishop” comes to represent the church, desperately seeking to stay alive by monopolizing on the sins of the people. The “judge” represents the law’s attempt to maintain its foothold by punishing even the most trivial of crimes. The“general” represents the military, replete with saber-rattling and the yearning for the days of past glory, now trying to relive them in flashy shows of arrogance and might.
The revolution is also seen in the embodiment of the prostitute Chantal, who quits the brothel and joins the revolution with radical fervor, acting as a foil to the trinity of societal power players. It is class conflict that would make Karl Marx swoon.
The play does not, however, bank on the politics and ethos of class consciousness and struggle.
It dives even deeper than that. This work is really no more than a depiction of the struggle between illusion and reality, posing the question to the reader: “What is real and what is not?”
The bishop, judge and general are obviously men in costumes acting out roles, but as representatives of a dying society, they ultimately take on the form of the status quo, vainly attempting to quell the revolution. In their eyes, they live in reality and the revolution is an illusion. But, in the case of revolutionary Chantal, they are the illusion and she is reality.
Genet plays with this theme throughout the play, ultimately tricking the reader into falling in and out of states of reality and illusion. This theme partially stems from Genet’s personal feelings on the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (the fascists defeating the Republican government) and the idea that illusion and reality had swapped places in Spain.
As he stated in a 1957 interview in Arts magazine, “My point of departure was situated in Spain, Franco’s Spain, and the revolutionary who castrates himself was all those Republicans when they had admitted their defeat.”
Though this play ran into trouble for its obscenity and was seen as a subversive piece of literature, The Balcony has bested the test of time for a reason.
It is one of the most astoundingly original works of drama ever written and has maintained relevance due to its scathing indictment of societal roles and social norms as well as its questioning of the power structures that exist within every society — a truly great play.
Conner McDonough can be reached at cmcdonough@spartans.ut.edu.
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