Word: genet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kronauer Space--a cramped, dingy, dark and dank recess somewhere off the vibrant labyrinth of the Adams House tunnels--provides the ideal stage for Jean Genet's Deathwatch, a play set during the 1940's in a cell-block of an unspecified French prison. Genet's drama percolates with modernist tensions of alienation, violence, passion and, of course, nihilism. These tensions play themselves out within the network of complicated relationships which inevitably arise when you cram three male convicts into a dark cell in the basement of Adams House...
Under the direction of Noah Kupferberg, the three male convicts, provocatively, are played by women. This literal feminization of the script raises interesting questions about the construction of masculinity, but also presents many challenges to the complex male interactions, explicitly violent and implicitly homoerotic, which fuel Genet's script. To the credit of the production, these tensions, though at times stylized and cliche, are generally sustained and credible...
Angela Delichatsios, playing "Georgie" LeFranc, holds the entire production together. Her marvelous mannerisms and convincing drawl provide the framework for a fully developed character who embodies much of the subtle nuances of affected masculinity which lie at the heart of Genet's LeFranc. Her representation of his desires and fears provides the primary intrigue for the play, and it is through her LeFranc that the play progresses. LeFranc's conflicting desire and contempt for Maurice culminate in the climactic scene which ingeniously blurs the lines between sexual and physical violence. This radiant scene captures in a few moments the entirety...
...spend the day watching your computer, you're not going to watch your television at night," contends Philip Glass, the avant-garde composer. "You'd rather go to the park and watch someone dancing." Live drama, predicts critic and iconoclastic director Robert Brustein, "will become what Jean Genet called 'the theater of the catacombs.' It will find small enclaves with the remainder of the faithful, like Christianity in the early days...
Maids--by Jean Genet. Directed by Valerie Weinstein. Loeb Experimental Theatre...