Genet: Performance and Politics

Jean Genet: Performance and Politics

Clare Finburgh, Carl Lavery and Maria Shevtsova

Hardback
October 2006
256 Pages
1403994803
£45.00

Pre-publication endorsements
'This volume will be seen as a major landmark and intervention in the field. It will update and revivify Genet studies and draw attention to his ubiquitous presence across numerous art forms and discourses in the Anglo-Saxon world.' - Professor David Walker, University of Sheffield, UK

Description
Jean Genet: Performance and Politics is the first book to explore the broad political significance of Genet's performance practice by focusing on his radical experiments, polemical subjects and formal innovations in theatre, film and dance. Its new approach brings together the diverse aspects of Genet's work through essays by international scholars and interviews with such key theatre directors as Richard Schechner, Terry Hands, Cornerstone Theatre and Jean-Baptiste Sastre.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction; C.Finburgh, C.Lavery & M.Shevtsova
SETTING THE STAGE
Genet in his 'Humour'; M.Corvin
From Theatricality to Performance Theory: The Screens; D.Bradby
The Theatre of Genet in Sociological Perspective; M.Shevtsova
Genet's The Screens as Media Allegory; D. Fieni
POLITICS AND PERFORMANCE
Reading The Blacks Through the 1956 Preface: Politics and Betrayal C.Lavery
'Micro-Treatise on a Mini-Politics': Genet, Individualism and Collectivity; C.Finburgh
GENET AND EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE
Theatre in a Graveyard: Site-Based Performance and The Revolution of Everyday Life; C.Lavery
Dancing the Impossible: Kazuo Ohno, Lindsay Kemp and Our Lady of the Flowers; M.Hargreaves
Jean, Ron, Franko and Me: Genet, Body Art and Abjection; C.Lavery & P.Woodward
KEY PRODUCTIONS
The Blacks and Its Impact on African American Theatre in the United States; J.Warrick
Las Criadas, Genet and Spain; M.M.Delgado
GENET: CINEMA AND DANCE
Corporeographies: The Dancing Body in 'adame Miroir and Un chant d'amour; E.Stephens
Genet and Cinema: Adaptations and Influence; J.Giles
PERFORMING GENET
An Interview with Joseph Strick
An Interview with Bill Rauch and Lynn Jeffries of Cornerstone Theatre Company
An Interview with Jean-Baptiste Sastre
An Interview with Terry Hands
An Interview with Colin Chambers
An Interview with Richard Schechner
More Holes Than Blanket: Rehearsal Process and Political Process in Genet's Theatre; R.Yarrow
Index

Author Biographies
CLARE FINBURGH is Lecturer in Modern Drama at the University of Essex, UK. She has published numerous articles on Jean Genet and contemporary French theatre.

CARL LAVERY is a Lecturer in Theatre at Lancaster University, UK. He has published on Jean Genet and avant-garde performance in a number of journals.

MARIA SHEVTSOVA is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. Her numerous publications include Theatre and Cultural Interaction (Sydney Studies, 1993), Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (Routledge, 2004) and Fifty Key Theatre Directors (co-edited, 2005). She is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.