Playing and Not Playing in Jean Genet's the Balcony and the Blacks

Caroline Sheaffer-Jones Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks The play within the play is discussed in relation to Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks. By staging the play within the play, Genet makes the central issue of his theatre not simply social or political concerns but the question of the spectacle. Through the embedded play, actors take on multiple roles, including that of spectator. Objectivity is brought into question and the spectator is neither simply outside theatre nor within it. Indeed the borders of the representation are diffi- cult to define. The notion of the work is examined and reference is also made to some of Derri- da’s texts. The metaphor of the ‘house of illusions’ in The Balcony, for example, does not simply relate to the bordello, but is clearly central to the idea of theatre, as is the title of the play. The play within the play in Genet’s texts renders problematic the difference between reality and illu- sion, outside and inside. For theatre, as for culture, the question remains to name and to direct shadows: and the theatre, which is not fixed in language and forms, destroys false shadows by this fact, but pre- pares the way for another birth of shadows around which the true spectacle of life assembles. (Artaud, The Theatre and its Double) ‘But is he still acting or is he speaking in his name?’ (Genet, The Blacks) The Play within the Play The play within the play is an integral part of Jean Genet’s theatre. Charac- ters step into the roles of others, or represent themselves, in front of an au- dience played by other characters. What is paramount about the play within the play is that it brings into focus the question of theatre. It highlights above all the acts of watching and acting, which are not as straightforward as they may seem. The term suggests that one might designate an inner play which is part of an outer play, yet it is precisely the boundary between the two which Genet brings into question. When the frontier between the acting in the play within the play and the so-called reality beyond this inner play is unclear, then it is apparent that what belongs to the representation is not well-defined and the very notion of the work needs to be rethought. In his writing on the parergon in a different context, Derrida has problematized the conception of 48 Caroline Sheaffer-Jones the work and its boundaries, for the parergon is neither internal nor external.1 Indeed, in analysing Genet’s use of the play within the play, I will discuss the limit of representation and the problem of distinguishing between playing and so-called reality. It can be shown that in The Balcony and The Blacks the in- teractions of an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ play disrupt the conventional notion of theatre as spectacle. Before examining these plays in detail, I will make some brief, general remarks about Genet and theatre. The play within the play has appeared in different forms in the works of many playwrights including Shakespeare, Corneille and Molière, for example, or Pirandello and Sartre.2 Drama has, of course, changed radically over the ages, especially when considered in relation to the function which Aris- totle ascribed to tragedy in the Poetics, namely catharsis or the purgation of the emotions of pity and terror. However, it is the relationship between per- former and spectator, the fundamental component of traditional theatre, which has been rethought by playwrights such as Genet. Modern drama has re-evaluated the aesthetics prevailing in Western thought, in which art is con- ceived of as predominantly the imitation of nature.3 The play within the play is an important means by which the interaction between art and life is re- examined. The possibility for the spectator to be completely detached from the play is brought into question. As Genet writes: ‘Without being able to say precisely what theatre is, I know what I will not let it be: the description of everyday gestures seen from the outside’.4 When the figure of the spectator is placed on stage, the border between the spectator and the actor is displaced and objectivity is undermined. As the distinction between the inner play and the outer play is transgressed before the spectator’s eyes, so too is the limit between the play and so-called reality and thus what constitutes playing needs to be redefined. Genet’s writings include poetry, novels, autobiography as well as plays, namely The Maids (1947; revised 1954), Deathwatch (1949), The Balcony (1956; revised 1960), The Blacks (1958) and The Screens (1961). Death, ritual and crime return again and again in his work, frequently centred on out- 1 Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). See also Derrida, Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974), p. 277; ‘Le Facteur de la vérité’, La Carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà (Paris: Flammarion, 1980), pp. 439-524. 2 For an overview, Robert J. Nelson, Play within a Play: The Dramatist’s Conception of his Art: Shakespeare to Anouilh (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958). 3 For a detailed analysis of various forms of mimesis, see in particular, Sylviane Agacinski, Jacques Derrida and others, Mimesis des articulations (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1975); Arne Melberg, Theories of Mimesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 4 ‘Comment jouer Les Bonnes’, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), IV, 269. All translations in this chapter are my own. .

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