In his preface to Le Balcon, Jean Genet states that the artist and poet has no responsibility to find a solution to the problem of evil; in fact, he should embrace it. The clientele circulating in the hallway of La Maison de Culture in Bourges, an Oxford-sized French town, clearly feel such moral detachment. In fact, Genet would be delighted.
The people of Bourges are referred to by their compatriots as the Bourgeois for a good reason. Longchamp bags, pearls, Barbour jackets and pashminas fill the mezzanine area of the theatre’s bar. Sound familiar? Glasses clink as the Bourgeois ascend the staircase, wishing their fellow theatre-goers a good evening, the parents of their son or daughter’s classmates at one of the lycee prives surrounding the Maison de la Culture.
Andre Malraux opened the theatre, cinema and lecture hall in the late fifties; since then, the place has thrived upon the various cultural pretensions of the Bourgeois – a retrospective of Godard just ended, and next week a professor from the Ecole Normale Superieure is coming to talk about Marivaux.
As I wind my way towards the bar area, I glimpse an American friend in earnest conversation with a man whom I later discover, thanks to the innumerable amount of Bourgeois who nod and offer him drinks, to be the philosophy teacher of a lycee prive – the deadline for references to Louis le Grand is undoubtedly imminent.
Most of the Bourgeois have taken their seats; those in the upper circle peer over into the stalls, their eyes darting in search of other parents, their neighbour with the country house in Provence, the Parisian banker who hasn’t been seen in this commuter town since Credit Lyonnais had to ask Papa for a larger allowance every month.
Le Balcon commences, runs its course and finishes. Nothing Genet would object to, as such – but this in itself he would probably find objectionable. Irma, the Mistress of the Brothel, was well played; the Chief of Police didn’t quite grasp what his role entailed.
No matter though, because how many people inside the theatre were actually following what went on? And such is the state of the theatre – not only here in Bourges, but also in Paris, in London, in New York.
Genet would no doubt agree. Upon asking his reaction not to the play, but to its audience, he would have looked me in the eye and recited an adapted version of the concluding lines of his aforementioned Preface: ‘Of course, all that I have just written does not concern an intelligent theatre-goer; he knows what he’s come to see. Mais les autres?’
