The Balcony

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing [absurd] episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Jean Genets 1957 French play Le Balcon (The Balcony) came alive on Monday evening in the LTG auditorium to provide another spectacle of majestic art that theatre is.

Here at the 11^th META edition, Sasidharan Naduvil presented a cutting satire on the hypocrisy of society that aimed to criticize the political strata and the continuous need of rebellion.

According to Sathyajit (Actor, Police Chief), Jenets play scrapes the bottom of our absurd realities to discover the images which rule us. In Albert Bermels words — A true image born of a false spectacle.

The spectacle as we saw was entirely false but the image it constructed was undeniably true. According to Ashadevi (Actor, Head Prostitute), power is equated with the image in the play. For in image, all that is of value is the surface and here the surface faithfully represents the Bishop, Judge and General.

By using the device of mise-en-abyme i.e. structuring the play analogous to a system of Chinese boxes, that is “a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, in a sequence appearing to recur infinitely”; the omnipresence of role playing is satirized. The play was divided into 7 tableaux. Each tableaux was an absurd salon episode where people coming to brothel (The Grand Balcony) for sex tried to fulfill their dream roles of cultural icons by donning the costumes. The characters scratched the pretense of decency involved in their roles by using sexual innuendos. The false General repeatedly rode his horse (the prostitute), whereas the false Bishop continuously preached his disciple (again a prostitute).

The most powerful statement of the play comes in the end when Irma (Ashadevi as Head Prostitute) sends all the characters along with the audience home to close the brothel for the night. According to Ashadevi, her statement, “This is a fake place, go back to your homes which is more fake, is directed towards those people who have sex with their wives but are thinking about movie actresses during the act of intercourse. According to her, the closing of the brothel instigates the cyclic structure of the play which portrays absurdity of the life to the utmost.

The closing of the brothel is a device of auto cancelling. The implication is clear that the next day the brothel will open again, people will take up role playing, the fake rebellion to gain dictatorship will come up and at the end once again the phoenix of tyrannical oppression will take off from the impetus of a brothel.

By precise tinkering and faithful adjustments of Jenets script, director Sasidharan produced a play which proved deconstructive last night for the political, cultural and societal structure and ideologies.

— Abhishek Tiwari