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.

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.

List of figures Acknowledgements Part I Introduction 1. Genet and commitment: politics and aesthetics 2. Tracing the shift: the event of the wound 3. Aesthetic politics: staging the wound Part II 4. Exploding the bordello in The Balcony: spectacle, allegory and the wound of theatre 5. Détournement, abjection and disidentification in The Blacks 6. Bringing it all back home: 'The battle of The Screens' 7. Conclusion: Genet our contemporary Part III 8. Interview with Lluís Pasqual 9. Interview with JoAnne Akalaitis 10. Interview with Ultz 11. Interview with Excalibah Appendix 'Preface to The Blacks', trans. Clare Finburgh References Index