Jean Genet: Performance and Politics

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. Where some of the contributors explore Genet's relationship with political discourses and movements (performance theory, sociology, situationism, postmodernism, post-structuralism), others trace his influence on contemporary practice (Butoh, Body Art, avant-garde theatre, site-specific performance and queer cinema). This exciting and original volume situates Genet as a key political playwright and as a major figure in the history of twentieth-century performance practice, and will be of interest to students of Theatre, Performance, Dance, Film and French.