THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

Jean Genet strolls into the theatre carrying a lifetime of defiance. Here is a man who spent his youth as a thief, vagrant, and outcast, a gay man and ex-convict who inverted society’s judgments by embracing the label of “criminal” as a kind of honor. Genet’s art is the art of the outsider, and when he turned to playwriting in the 1940s and 50s, he did so with a flair for ritual and transgression. He once said that treachery, theft, and homosexuality – all the things society shunned – were his sacred themes. On stage, he elevated the outcasts to protagonists and crafted ceremonies of role-playing that exposed the arbitrary nature of power.

Genet’s plays are highly stylized rituals of revolt. They often feature characters enacting elaborate role reversals. Identities in Genet are fluid, layered, ...