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7/21/2019 New Plays of Ionesco and Genet
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MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Tulane Drama Review.
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New Plays of Ionesco and GenetAuthor(s): Wallace FowlieSource: The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Sep., 1960), pp. 43-48Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124901Accessed: 22-11-2015 07:23 UTC
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7/21/2019 New Plays of Ionesco and Genet
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New
Plays
of
Ionesco
and
Genet
By
WALLACE
FOWLIE
The
parable
of
Eugene
Ionesco's
new
play,
Le
Rhinocdros,
s
simple
and
obvious.The
inhabitants
f a
small
provincial
own
are transformed
into
rhinoceroses.
At
first his
process
s
gradual,
and then more
and
more
precipitous.
The
protagonist,
whose
name
is
B6renger,
ike
that
of
the
protagonist
n Tueur
sans
gages,
sees in the
first cene one
or
two of theinhabitants f his townmetamorphosed.n the secondscene,
a
colleague
in
the
office
where
he works becomes
a
rhinoceros. n the
third,
his best
friend,
Jean,
is
transformed
efore
his
very
eyes.
n
the
last
scene,
his
mistress ushes offto
join
the
herd.
He
remains
alone,
the last soul in
the town to
resist
the
epidemic.
He refuses
o
comply
with
the collective
mania,
the standardization
or
nazification
of his
world.
The
parable
is on
the
sacred
ndividuality
f man. Alone
the
pro-
tagonist
B6renger
remains
faithful o
his vocation of man.
The construction f
the
play
follows
a
continuous
progression.
A
Sunday
afternoon
n
summeron the
public square
where
we see the
familiar picerie, afe' nd boulangerie fthe
provincial
own ntroduces
us to
most of the characters nd
to their
trivial
conversation.
Jean
up-
braids his
unkempt
friend
B6renger,
nd
the
logician
of
the
town
dis-
courses
on
the
number
of
paws
a
cat has. The
surprise
aused
by
the
first
ppearance
of
a
rhinoceros n thisFrench
own
s
rapidly
diminished
by
a
passionate argument
over its exact
description:
does it
have
one
or
two
horns?
The
office cene
where
B6renger
lmost
arrives
ate is a
continuationof the
stupid
arguments egun
in the
first
cene.
At
the
end,
Mme
Boeuf
arrives o
explain
the absence of her
husband.
He
has
become a rhinoceros nd is bellowingfromdown below. In fact,he
causes the
stairway
o
collapse
and the
members
f
the
office
taff
ave
to
be rescued
by
firemen.
In
the Barrault
production
at the
ThC6tre
de
France
(formerly
he
Od6on),
the
third
scene is
made into a
prodigious
pectacle
thanks
to
the
histrionic
gifts
of
William
Sabatier who
plays
Jean.
B6renger
(played
by
Barrault)
calls
on
Jean
in
the
morning,
nd
awakens
him
in order to
ask
forgiveness
or
his
stubbornbehavior
the
day
beforeon
the
square.
As he
moves back
and forth
between
his
bed
and
his bath-
room,
we
watch in
the
gestures,
he
movements
nd
the
voice
of
Jeanthe gradual metamorphosisf a man into a rhinoceroswho does not
realize
what
is
happening.
It
is
the
pivotal
scene of
the
play,
written
in
Ionesco's
now familiar
tyle
where the comic
and
the
hallucinatory
are
skillfully
used.
43
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44
The
Tulane
Drama Review
The
final scene
is
dominated
by
B6renger
for
whom Barrault has
found
an
excellent
characterization,
combining
of
pathos
and humor
which transform veryordinary ndividual into--not a rhinoceros,
but
a
hero.
The two
friends
who
visit
B6renger
n
his
room,
Dudard
the office
olleague
and
Daisy
the
typist,
ndergo,
before
his
very eyes
and
despite
his
arguments,
process
of
de-humanization.
hey
too
are
contaminated
y
the
disease
and
rush off t the end to
join
the herd of
pachyderms.
B&renger,
he
type
of
average
man,
grows
into the
stature of
pro-
tagonist,
because he is
not influenced
by
words
and
speeches.
In
an
almost
pitiful
way,
he
struggles gainst
the
exaltation
of all
the
others,
against
an
overwhelming
orce which
isolates him.
Slowly
at
first,
nd
thenmore and more
swiftly,
Wrenger
s forced nto an
experience
of
solitude.At the
end
of the
play
he
is
totally
lone after
bserving,
with-
out
always fully
understanding
t,
a
clinical
study
of
conformity
nd
contamination. his
solitude
of man
is at
the center
of
all of
Ionesco's
plays,
and
it
is
always
manifested
n
the same
way,
with the
same ad-
mixture f
irony
nd
burlesque
and
humor.
The
familiar
mannerisms f
Ionesco's
style
are
all
in the
new
play:
the ritual of
commonplaces,
he
sudden
eruption
of the
fantastic
n
the
most
drily
banal
scene,
the
meaningless
ists
of
words,
the
repeti-
tions.Buthe has added to Le Rhinocdros as he had added to lastyear's
play
Tueur
sans
gages)
a
parable.
By
definition,
parable
is
a
story
which
teaches,
nd
by
this
application
of
a
lesson,
onesco's
play
will
doubtlessreach a far
wider
public
than
his
previous
plays.
The
public
attending
he
opening
performances
t the
Theatre
de
France
have en-
joyed
the
play
and
understood t
meaning.
For the
first
ime in
his
career,
onesco
has
conquered
a
large
public easily
and
quickly.
n this
addition of an
allegory,
onesco
has
lost
some
of the
theatrical
urity
e
demonstrated
n
Les
Chaises and
La
Lepon
where no
didactic
element
blurred he
simple functioning
f
the
infernal
machine,
f the
anti-logicof our world.
However the thesis s not
developed
or
over-emphasized
n Le
Rhi-
nocdros.
At
one
moment n the
Barrault
production,
he
goose
step
is
used which
unfortunately
imitsthe
meaning
of the
tyranny
o nazism.
This
specification
may
well be
avoided
in
the
English
production
now
being
rehearsed
by
Laurence Olivier. It is to
be
hoped
also
that
Olivier
will
avoid the excessive
realism
of
Barrault's
first
ct,
both in
the
set
and the
mise-en-sctne.
arrault's
triumph
s in
the
delicate
combination
of
horror
and
whimsy
he
finds for the
characterization f
B6renger.
This characters in all theplaysand I imagine t is in Eugene Ionesco's
own character. t
is
surely
n the
role
of
Ionesco
in
L'Impromptu
de
l'Alma.
M.
Ionesco
has often
disclaimed
any
ownership
of
his
dreams
and
obsessions.
He sees them
as
part
of
the
collective
unconscious,
part
of
an ancestral
heritage,
legacy
of all the
ages.
On
several
occasions,
n
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WALLACE
FOWLIE
45
articles and
interviews,
e
has
spoken
of a
feeling
of human
anguish
he
has been
aware
of
since childhood and which
he believes
comes
not
onlyfromhis life but fromthe life of man. It is a sense of isolation,
of
being
encircled
by
a
void,
and of
being
unable to
communicate
with
others.The
kind
of
banal conversation
orwhich
he
has become
famous
in his
plays
s
precisely
he
symptom
f
man's
inability
o communicate.
Ionesco's
speech
is often the
very
kind of
speech
we
hear
around
us
almost
everyday.
His skill is his
use of
this
kind of
speech,
the
force-
fulnesswith which
he
makes
us feel
man's
incapacity
to
express
his
fundamental
hought.
His
plays
often
give
the
impression
f
being
au-
topsies
of our
unacknowledged,
nvisible
manias.
Ten years ago, in May 1950,La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald So-
prano)
was
played
before
an
audience
of
fifty
n
the
Th6itre de
la
Huchette. n
February
1960,
Le
Rhinocdroswas
performed
wo
or
three
times a week
before
large
fashionable
audiences in
the
ThCltre
de
France. The
plays
Ionesco
has written
during
these ten
years,
and
which
today
are
being
performed
n
Tunis,
London,
San Francisco nd
Helsinki,
are
close
to
his
obsessions.
They
are
in
fact
the
exorcisms
f
his
anxiety.
As
a
writerhe has
acknowledged
his debt
to the
surrealists.
His
ancestors re
Kafka and
Chaplin.
His
art
reminds
us
constantly
of the
anguish
of
Kafka
and the antics
of
Chaplin.
The dramaturgy f Ionesco makes of his plays an art that is totally
autonomous,
xisting
y
tself
without
he usual
reliance
on
an
ideology.
The
play
itself,
s
it was
being
written,
made
its
own
discovery
f
reali-
ties
which
were not
defined
before the
text was
composed.
onesco
has
testified o
this
experience
of
playwritihg.
uring
the
very
plocess
of
writing,
he
dramatist
will
come
upon
unexpected
realities
and these
will
become
the richest
lementsof
the
play.
This
is
in
keeping
with
surrealistdoctrine
which
has
always
stressedthe
revelatory
power
of
the
imagination.
That
part
of a
play,
or
of
any
work
of
art,
which
is
ideology, s bydefinition otaland self-containedt theverybeginning.
It
cannot
possiblybring
out
what
Ionesco
calls
unexpected
realities.
A
purely
deological
play
is
therefore
demonstration f
what
has
already
been
demonstrated.
onesco
would
simply
laim
there s no
further
eed
of
demonstration.
The
creation,
he
writing
f
a
play
is
therefore
he
discovery
f
the
play.
It
is based
upon
elements f
surprise,
lementswhich
first
urprise
the
playwright
imself.
t would
be
significant
o
compare
the
explana-
tion which
onesco
has
given
of
his first
lay,
La
Cantatrice
Chauve,
with
the
various
explanations
of
his
critics
nd
interpreters.
hereas
onescohas called his
play
the
expression
of the
unexpected,
of
the
unusual
(insolite)
as it
rises
up gratuitously
rom
banal
language
and
action,
the
critics f the
playwright
ave
devised
many
ngenious
nd
contradictory
definitions.
hey
have
called it an
attack
on
the
English
bourgeoisie,
or
an
effort o
destroy
he
art
of
the
theatre.
They
have
defined
t
as
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46
The Tulane
DramaReview
abstract
heatre
or
pure
theatreor
avant-garde
heatre.
onesco
claims
that
no one has
yet atisfactorily
efined
pure"
or
"avant-garde"
heatre.
If M. Ionesco has no specific ntention or plan, when he begins to
write
play,
he
agrees
that he
has
multiple
semi-conscious
r
ill-articu-
lated
plans
in his
mind. These become
precise
as the
writing
ontinues.
This
is
a
strong
tand
against
playwrights
ho
would reform
heworld
by
educating
it.
Ionesco
places
himself
mong
those
artistshostile
to
all forms
f
"truth"
or
"propaganda"
which
by
their
very
nature
seem
destined to
become
forces f
oppression.
At times
onesco
has referred
to two forces f
oppression
which he
considers
he most
dangerous
for
the
artist: he
sclerosis
f
the
bourgeois
mentality
nd the
tyranny
f
po-
litical
power.
All of
his
plays
illustrate he first
f
these,
and
Le Rhi-
nocdros eferspecificallyo the second. This is his twelfth lay.Twelve
plays
in ten
years,
not
one of which
was written
with
the
intention
of
being
"popular"
or
"demagogic."
In
the
1959-60
season,
among
the
smallertheatres
f
Paris,
the
newly
decorated
ThAtre
de
Luthce
has
replaced
Le
Babylone. Roger
Blin's
production
f
Les
Ntgres by
Jean
Genet is
the
unpredicted
uccess
f
the
year.
The
successcomes
from
many
sources:
from
he text
tself,
ne
of
the strongestwhichGenet has written or the stage; fromthemise-en-
scene
of
Roger
Blin
who
shows himself
xtraordinarily
ensitive
to
the
poetry
and the
dramatic ntention of
a
very
difficult
ext;
from
the
performance
f
the thirteen
Negroes
who
play
at
being
actors
with
the
seriousness nd
frenzy
f
children
convinced
that
their
game
is real.
Once
again,
in
the
history
f the
theatre,
poet
has created a
play
which
is
totally
outside
of
existing
trends
and
schools and
theoriesof
contemporary
heatre.
he
sumptuous
rose
of
Genet,
nterspersed
ith
argot
and
scatological anguage,
is
indeed
the art of
a
poet controlling
the action
of
the
play,
which s the
parody
of
a
ritualistic rime.
A clue to
the dramaturgyf Les Ntgresis in a letterof Genet
published
in the
new
1958 edition of Les
Bonnes
(L'Arbalbte)
where
n
six
succinct
ages,
he
discusses
his
total
dissatisfaction
with the
formulasof
the
contem-
porary
theatre.
He
denounces
the
stupidity
nd
triviality
f
actors
and
directorswho seem to
base
their
art
on
exhibitionism,
n
characteriza-
tions
which come
from,
heir
obsessions
nd
dreams.The
Western
play
has
become
a
masquerade
for
Genet. He
advocates
threatre f
ceremony,
a
return
o
the
conception
of
the
mass,
of
a
theatre
for
nitiates,
where
the
high
dramatic
moment
would be
comparable
to the Elevation
in the
Catholicmass. In becominga diversion, n entertainment,hemodern
theatre
has
adulterated
the
significance
f
theatre.
Genet
suggests
hat
what
s
needed is
a
clandestine
heatrewhich the
"faithful"
would
attend
in secret.
Les
Nkgres
s
a
nightly
itual,
surrounded
by secrecy,
kind of
mass
celebrated
before
a
catafalque.
If
during
the
performance,
ne
thinks
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WALLACE
FOWLIE
47
of
African
ceremonies,
of
black masses and
of certain
esoteric-erotic
bottes-de-nuit
n
Paris,
one is
constantly
ulled
back to the
specific lay
ofJeanGenet,to thepoet's creationwhichtranscends ll thehistrionic
types
t evokes.
The
play,
called
a
clownerie,
pens
with
a
dance,
a
Mozart
minuet,
performed
y
four
Negroes
(three
n
dress
suit
and
one barefoot
and
wearing
a
sweater)
nd
four
Negresses dressed
gaudily
n bad
taste).
As
they
whistle nd
hum,
they
dance
in
front f
a
casket.Five members
f
the
court
enter: the
queen,
her
valet,
the
governor,
he
judge
and
the
missionary.
t is
obvious
that
these are
Negroes
wearing
white
masks.
The
intricate
relationships
between the two
groups
of
actors
and
be-
tween
actors and
spectators
re
quickly
established.The
masked
mem-
bers of the courtare whitesas the
Negroes
see themwhen thewhites
are
in
power.
The
eight
black
dancers are
Negroes
as
they imagine
they
are
seen and
judged by
whites.
They
are
assembled to
enact
an
imaginary
crime
(the slaying
of
a
white
woman),
committed
by
real
Negroes
n
the
presence
of
false
whites.The
spectators
ense,
even
be-
forethe
catafalque
turns ut to
be two
chairs
covered with a
cloth,
that
this s a
ritualistic rimeon
the
nature
of
love which
the man in
power
feelsfor
the
one in
his
power.
n
this
case,
the
one
in
power
s
a
queen
who
demands
the
love
of
her black
subjects.
She is
supported
in her
desiresby a missionary nd a judge. The subjects,or the conquered,
are the
group
of
Negroes
who
are
uncontrollable,
who
are
constantly
moving
about,
uttering
houts of
laughter,
parodying
themselves nd
others,
xpressing nguish
and
anger
and
mirth
as if
they
ived in a
world
both
fictitious nd
real.
Intermittently
ttention
is called to
the
corpse
of
the
murdered
woman
who
is
supposed
to
be in
the
catafalque.
This
is
a
guarantee
for the
seriousness f the
ritual,
for
the
general
atmosphere
f
the
play,
which
s
one of
reprobation.
On
the level of
performance,
either
group
on the
stage
is allowed
to
deceive. As actorsneithergrouphas thede-sire to deceive. The
corypheus,
alled
Archibald,
often
harangues
the
real
public
in the
audience
and asks
them
to
observe
the
seriousness
of the
theatrical
public
on
the
stage.
Roger
Blin,
the
director f
the
production
t the
Lut&ce
still
vividly
remembered s the
director
nd actor of
Beckett's
n
attendant
Godot),
has
faithfully
ollowed all
the
performance
irections
given
by
Genet
in
his text.
His
company
of
Negro
actors,
who
come
from
various
coun-
tries,
nd
who
speak
in
various French
accents,
have
been
remarkably
trained in a
performance
o
spirited,
o
animated
as
to be
physically
exhausting.M. Blin has succeeded n creating t theverybeginning nd
maintaining
until the
very
end,
the
dramatic
ambiguity
which
is the
central situation of
the
play:
namely,
the
conflicting
elationships
be-
tween
actors and
public
on
the
stage,
and the
public
in
the
audience.
Blin has
not
neglected
an
even
more
subtle
relationship,
hat
existing
between
the desire
of
the
actors to
amuse
themselves
s
they
act,
and
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48 The
Tulane Drama
Review
their
desire
to
amuse us
in
the audience at the
same
time.
The invisible
presence
of
Roger
Blin
is
felt
throughout
he
performance.
He
is
the
masterof ceremonies, hemasterof the strange iturgywhichunfolds
with
alternating
pasms
of
humiliation and
fury.
At
every
point
Blin
brilliantly
upports
the text of
Genet.
He
neither
explains
too much
nor
over-simplifies.
ot
only
has he
trained
his actors
n
a
complicated
stage
choreography,
ut he has
harmonized
heir
ensibility
ith
a
secret
rite.
It
would be futile to
interpret
es
N~gres
as a satire
on colonialism.
The revolt of
hatred which the
play
depicts
s much
deeper
and more
universal.The
Negroes
who
speak
the
opulent language
of
Jean
Genet
give expression
o
a
rage
which
goes
far
beyond
the
rage
of
theirrace.
The
oppression
fromwhich
they
uffers so
hostile,
o
incomprehensible,
as
to be
easily
the
oppression
of
mankind. The
nightly
disappearance
of
a
whitewoman
by
a
process
f
magic
s
one
way
of
exorcism,
ne
way
of
rediscovering
reedom nd
purity.
Genet's
play
is an
incantation,
n
hallucination. The
white face of the sacrificed
s
merely
he
symbol
of
obsession.
At the
beginning
of the
play,
one
of the actors
says,
"Nous
sommes
de
grands
enfants.
Que
nous reste-t-il?
e
Th6ftre "
("We
are
children.
What is left
for
us?
The
Theatre ")
This is
surely
one
of
the
clues for
an understandingfLes Negres.The parodyof thewhites in the char-
actersof the
court)
s in
juxtaposition
with the
parody
of
the
blacks
by
themselves.
n
the
earlier
play
of
Les Bonnes
(The Maids),
Genet studied
the
curious
bond
of
duplicity
between
the mistress
f
the house
(Mad-
ame)
and her two maids. In
Jean-Paul
Sartre's
ong
study
of the
psy-
chology
and the art of
Genet
(Saint
Genet,
comedien et
martyr),
e
analyzes
the
persistence
f
this theme in
all the
writings
f Genet.
A
strangely
istorted ove
joins
the
saint
and
the
criminal,
he
guard
and
the
prisoner,
he
policeman
and the
thief,
he master nd the
slave,
the
white nd theblack. In one senseperhapsLes NegrestestifiesoGenet's
understanding
f
Sartre's
tudy
of
Genet.
In
another
sense,
the
play
is
about
the
meaning
of
theatre,
bout the
distinction
between
a
role to
be
played
and
a
human
existence,
about the
relationship
between
a
ceremony
nd
life.
The violence
which is enacted in
this
play
is
not
real.
The
ritual is
a
symbolic eremony.
No
corpse
is
in the
coffin.
here
is
actually
no
coffin.At the end
of the
play,
Archibald
affirmsome
of
his
opening
speeches:
"Nous sommes
des
com6diens,
et
nous
avons
organis6
une
soir6e
pour
vous divertir."
"We
are
actors
and
we have
organized
an
eveningforyour entertainment.")n Les Ntgres theNegroesplay the
personal
drama of
Jean
Genet,
according
to
Sartre,
which
is the
agon
between
the
actor
and
the
martyr.
t
is
a
play
of
vast
philosophical
m-
plications:
the drama of
a
man
who must
play
the
part
of
a
criminal n
the
very
ociety
which
has
ostracized
him
because of
his
crime.
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