SOLANCE CLAIRE MADAME. THE CHARACTERS t Two housemaids, sisters, thirty to thirtyfive years old. Solange is the elder. She is about twenty.five. J 1 t THE MAIDS Madame's bedroom. LouisQuinze furniture.
At first glance the play seems to have a chaotic plot, almost delirious.
But a much closer look reveals that the plot might have some cohesion. But, even after a thorough approach, the plot still seems to lack consistency. It looks like the scenes are disconnected, random and delirious, having no relevance or coherence. Nonetheless, the play has a great appeal to the audiences around the world, because in reality it is a dream. It’s the dream of every person in the audience and that is something the writer mentions indirectly and discreetly in the final scene of the play. What’s more, his notes on the design of the set state it clearly: the stage is an extension towards the audience. Thus, the play is a recount of a dream and dreams, according to the science of psychotherapy, exist to serve two purposes:
When someone’s asleep, the defenses of the ‘Ego’ are repressed and that’s why he/she can let go while sleeping. But, messages from the unconscious, which shatter a person’s ‘Superego’ image of himself, mobilize intense emotional charges and wake him up. In order for his sleep not to be disturbed, some of the ‘Ego’s’ defenses are still operational, even though most of them are in a repressed state, and continue to filter out messages from the unconscious, which are not compatible with the ‘Superego’ image a person has for himself. For this reason, the unconscious symbolizes its messages in dreams, so that these messages can go through the ‘Ego’s’ defenses and reach the person’s conscious level, even though most of the aforementioned defenses are repressed during sleep. The unconscious always sends the right message, which if properly interpreted and accepted by the conscious, then the person can withstand to comprehend and contain it. According to psychotherapy, every element of a dream (a person, an emotional charge, even a material object) is some part of the person that is dreaming and must be interpreted as such, in order for the person’s level of consciousness to rise. Furthermore, every part of a dream can be analyzed from many different angles and bring different kinds of consciousness to a person. That’s the reason why the writer places mirrors on stage. There are times that a dream’s content can be taken as having a delusional form. The difference between delusion and dream is the following: a delusion is perceived, by the person having it, as reality, whereas a dream, upon waking up, is perceived as something non real (happening outside of the person’s world). Each dream is a symbolized psychic state, since each dream is a photograph of some part of his psyche. Thus, the play is the dream of someone dreaming and the psychotheatrological analysis will be for that person. This person will be each spectator from the audience (from now on called ‘the spectator’). The heroes of the play will be analyzed as the different parts of ‘the spectator’, namely they will all have the same psychic structure (the same parents), but they will play a different ‘role’ in the emotional pattern of ‘the spectator’. Since, each role in the play mirrors a different part of ‘the spectator’, the play in its entirety mirrors his complete psyche, and thus every person in the audience sees his/hers own psychic parts on stage through this dream-play. At the end, Irma awakens the audience and sends them back to the real world. Since the writer knew that the play is a dream (probably his own), but didn’t state it clearly, he chose to protect the play’s plot from the psychic projections of the director and those of the costume and scenic designers, so that the correct (and not a different) message would reach the audience. Thus, he gave clear directions for almost everything regarding the play’s staging, except the lighting. That he left it up to the discretion of the director, allowing the scenes to have a different emotional charge according to their lighting setup. He did, nevertheless, state that the chandelier must be the center of the lights on the stage. Correctly, the author states that the play should be staged, completely in accordance, with his elaborate production notes.
The Blacks: (French: Les Nègres,) is a play by the FrenchdramatistJean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théâtre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959.
Synopsis[edit]
A review of the Theatre Royal Stratford East production (2007) states:
Genet Play
Using the framework of a play within a play, it exposes racial prejudice and stereotypes while exploring black identity. As a troupe of black actors re-enact the trial and ensuing murder of a white woman before a kangaroo court, the Queen and her entourage look on and comment. Five of the 13 black actors don Whiteface to play establishment figures. The Queen (a whited-up woman) comes to a Command Performance, but the proceedings are far removed from any Royal Variety Show.[1]
In Genet's oeuvre[edit]
In a prefatory note, Genet specifies the conditions under which he anticipates the play would be performed, revealing his characteristic concern with the politics and ritual of theatricality:
This play, written, I repeat, by a white man, is intended for a white audience, but if, which is unlikely, it is ever performed before a black audience, then a white person, male or female, should be invited every evening. The organizer of the show should welcome him formally, dress him in ceremonial costume and lead him to his seat, preferably in the first row of the orchestra. The actors will play for him. A spotlight should be focused upon this symbolic white throughout the performance.
But what if no white person accepted? Then let white masks be distributed to the black spectators as they enter the theater. And if the blacks refuse the masks, then let a dummy be used.[2]
After The Balcony, The Blacks was the second of Genet's plays to be staged in New York. The production was the longest-running Off-Broadway non-musical of the decade. This 1961 New York production opened on 4 May at the St. Mark's Playhouse and ran for 1,408 performances. It was directed by Gene Frankel, with sets by Kim E. Swados, music by Charles Gross, and costumes and masks by Patricia Zipprodt. The original cast featured James Earl Jones as Deodatus, Roscoe Lee Browne as Archibald, Louis Gossett Jr., as Edgar Alas Newport News, Cicely Tyson as Stephanie, Godfrey Cambridge as Diouf, Jay J. Riley as the Governor, Cynthia Belgrave as Adelaide Bobo, Ethel Ayler as Augusta Snow, Helen Martin as Felicity Trollop Pardon, Raymond St. Jacques as Judge, Maya Angelou as the White Queen and Charles Gordone as the burglar.[3]
Shi Mei Li directed the play in 1983.[4] Download adobe premiere pro cc 2017 for mac full crack.
See also[edit]References[edit]
Further reading[edit]
External links[edit]
The Balcony Jean Genet Summary Pdf
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