WORK COMPANY PRESS CONTACT
More about this production

“The run takes place during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Nearly thirty years ago, Genet arrived in Chicago to cover the 1968 convention with fellow writer/philosophers Terry Southern, William Burroughs, and John Sack.”
– Playbill Online
More Press
 
Preview: The Balcony
Playbill Online, July 26, 1996

Dramaturg, company manager and producer Gregory Berlowitz said that the company created this new adaptation by retrieving bits and pieces from all seven versions of Genet’s play. “The most amazing thing to me about [the different versions] is that Genet’s fascination with the revolutionaries changed. What we’ve done is we’ve picked what most productions don’t do. We highlighted the revolution. Some versions cut out the [scenes with] revolutionaries altogether. The play is about the revolution to us.”

In their research, the company also found three additional characters in one version of the play, possibly translated by one who accessed Genet’s notebooks. the characters are named Blood, Tears, and Sperm. In the plot, they spring forth from a dream that the brothel’s Madam has, and from there on weave themselves into the consciousness of the play.

Settle feels that both her generation and contemporary theatre are at a similar turning point which she describes as “tag-team tandem disarray.” She observes that both construct themselves from the sample of history available; therefore, a production of The Balcony, which displays a consciousness of both political and societal history, is a timely production.

Coincidentally, the run also takes place during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Nearly thirty years ago, Genet arrived in Chicago to cover the 1968 convention with fellow writer/philosophers Terry Souther, William Burroughs and John Sack.

The show will run in the basement space of the Chopin Theatre, where the metaphoric use of mirrors in the set will continually change the perspective and image of the stage.

- Blair Glaser -