Set largely inside a brothel during a revolution, The Balcony follows clients acting out elaborate fantasies as judges, bishops and generals while everything around them crumbles.  

First staged in the 1950s, The Balcony sits somewhere between political theatre, ritual, farce and nightmare. Genet is less interested in revolution as a clean transfer of power than in the images through which power makes itself believable — uniforms, ceremonies, titles, punishment, spectacle. The brothel becomes a miniature state, then perhaps the state reveals itself as another brothel. The joke, if it can be called that, is vicious: authority survives partly because people know how to reproduce its gestures.

This 1991 Faber edition uses the translation by Barbara Wright and Terry Hands and includes Genet’s notes on the performance of the play. 

Edition / condition: Faber and Faber, London, 1991. Paperback. Translation by Barbara Wright and Terry Hands, first published in this form in 1991. Includes Genet’s How to Perform The Balcony (1962) and Note (1960). Light shelf wear and handling to covers, with minor age toning; internally clean and firmly bound. Very good condition.