The Maids by Jean Genet, directed by John Bolton, lighting by Armando Licul
and Govin Ruben. With Suzannah Bayes-Morton, Zoe Ellerton-Ashley and Shelly
Lauman. Victorian College of the Arts School of Drama Autumn Season, Grant
Street Theatre
I vividly remember my first encounter with the writing of Jean Genet. I was
around nineteen and for reasons I forget - perhaps no reason - I picked up
his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers . I read it in a kind of daze: I
found myself hypnotised by the sheer decadent sensuality of the prose, and
at the same time completely confused. I did not understand this moral
universe at all.
Yet, when I reached its final pages, there occurred one of those perceptual
shifts that art can occasionally produce, a kind of click; the mental
equivalent, I suppose, of those Victorian optical puzzles where you suddenly
realise that what appears at first to be a white vase is also two faces in
profile. It was as if, through the experience of reading it, I had
insensibly been given a key to the book. I went straight back to page one
and read it again. And it's probably fair to say - though I can say this of
a number of books, thus demonstrating the vicious effect of reading - that I
have never been quite the same since.
My naive bourgeois assumptions had, all the way through the book, been
kicked, trampled and spat on; and even so, I had probably understood about
fifty per cent of its violations. (In many ways I had a sheltered
upbringing). Genet turned all the values I didn't realise I held violently
inside out.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Hating the theatre
The blog's running late this week. Yes, your indefagitable crrrritic has
had a minor brain implosion, due to a number of trivial domestic and
biological emergencies. Even so, I am ruminating - somewhat more slowly
than I would like - on Jean Genet, whose play The Maids I had the pleasure
of seeing last week, courtesy of the VCA autumn graduation season at Grant
Street. It will be up in the next day or so, if the gods are kind to me.
Meantime, I share with you an article which caught my eye in the Guardian .
It's one of those personal pieces which come around fairly regularly on "why
I hate the theatre". Hester Lacey went to see an Alan Bennett play which
was "jolly good", but next time, by George, she's going to stay home and
watch a dvd. The seats are uncomfortable at the theatre. It's too hot.
It's full of pretentious people. It cost a fortune.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All the best
Alison
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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