The maids

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Work data
Title: The maids
Original title: Les bonnes
Greta Manta in Les bonnes, 1988

Greta Manta in Les bonnes , 1988

Original language: French
Premiere: April 17, 1947
Place of premiere: Théâtre de l'Athénée , Paris
people
  • Claire
  • As long as
  • Madam

The Maids (French: Les Bonnes ) is a tragedy in one act by Jean Genet from 1947, which premiered in the same year at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris amid violent protests. It was Genet's first work performed on stage and is his most frequently performed piece.

The piece contains three female roles to be played by men.

Emergence

Jean Genet (1910–1986), given up for adoption by his mother six months later, grew up in a family of artisans in Burgundy , acolyte, soldier in the colonies, eventually deserter, tramp and thief, began to write poetry in prison. In the 1940s desertion , vagrancy , theft of books and dodging were punished with prison terms, which is why Genet was convicted a total of sixteen times. After the publication of his poem Le Condamné à mort in September 1942 in an edition of around one hundred, on 'organized' paper by the occupation army, as it is rumored, the poet quickly found opportunities for publication and the admiration and support of the already famous authors Jean Cocteau and Sartre . The latter wrote: "We currently have an absolute literary genius in France: it's Jean Genet's name, and his style is that of Descartes ."

In the years 1943 to 1947 Genet wrote three novels and two dramas at the same time, some in freedom, some in prison. He was last released from prison on March 15, 1944. Genet's status was extremely uncertain in the early years of the drama, as a conditional prison sentence of two years would have led to an immediate arrest in the event of another theft. It was also the author's most productive creative period, during which the novels Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs , Miracle de la rosé [miracle of the rose], Querelle de Brest and Pompes funèbres, Bikini [The Feast of the Dead] were completed and published. The second drama of the period, Haute Surveillance , premiered in 1949.

Subject, value

“The madam is good, is rich, is beautiful, is generous. Are these the reasons why the maids Solange and Claire consider murdering their lady? The piece oscillates between tragedy and comedy and describes the search for identity and meaning of three women. In the background the foil of a destructive war, the Holocaust and the persecution of culture and everything that even gave the appearance of the deviant , both by the occupiers and by the collaborators. The premiere in 1947 in Paris led to protest and rejection of the drama, which according to conventional assessments is 'located between a perverse dream and a gruesome reality'. "

The play The Maids is part of a series of three-person psychodramas that deal with power, humiliation and submission: Strindberg's Fröken Julie (1889) and Sartre's Huis clos (1944), later Fassbinder's Die bitteren Tänen der Petra von Kant (1971) , Bernhards Ritter, Dene, Voss (1986) and Schwabs Die Presidentinnen (1990).

action

1st scene

The sisters Claire and Solange serve as maids in a wealthy household. They put their master in jail on false accusations in order to glorify him as a criminal. The first act begins with one piece in a piece. You play mistress and maid. Claire is the Madame, Solange is the subordinate. The dialogue culminates in the fact that the servant wants to strangle the mistress. An alarm clock ends the game. The real mistress is on her way home.

2nd scene

Madame is coming home. The maids, who both love and hate her, decide to murder her with poison. At the moment they serve the poisoned tea, the mistress receives a call. Her husband has been released from custody. While the mistress hurries towards her husband, the maids play the deadly ritual to an end.

3rd scene

The game goes on. Claire again takes on the role of the mistress, puts on her clothes and drinks the poisoned tea. Her sister Solange surrenders to the authorities.

interpretation

“Exaggeration and anger, despair and excitement, stylization and revolt - all these elements merge into an aesthetic-psychological magma beyond morality. Beyond, that is, independent of her. This is exactly what is so difficult to reconstruct today, today, when the sacrificial cult seems to be stuck in every crack of the social. ”This description by Ina Hartwig refers to Genet's poem Le Condamné à mort , but it can also refer to the Apply theater text.

The interpretation as a resistance drama is just as legitimate. Originated at a time when the question of power always included the decision about life and death, here the powerless dare the ultimate demonstration of power, dare rebellion, denunciation, murder. The reference to the autobiography also appears essential, because the author allows virtual crimes to be committed, places his characters under the sword of Damocles of arrest, under which he himself lived permanently when the drama was written. Crime in the head, in the text or on the stage then does not have to be lived out in reality. Poetry as a substitute act.

Quotes

“You are lucky to have clothes given to you. I have to buy them if I want them. But I will order even more splendid ones, so that the funeral procession for the gracious gentleman is even more brilliant. "

- The madam

“[…] There is hardly a piece that leads so directly into the abysses and intimacies of a sibling pair, with this complicated network of relationships of infatuation, hatred, adoration and contempt. And hardly any other piece dances along the borders so persistently in his explorations: the borders to sadomasochism, same-sex love, auto-eroticism, but also the borders to betrayal, cowardice and murder. "

- The Bund : The Disenchanted Maids, April 28, 1979

“Genet's characters stand in creative opposition to the ruling, absolutely male, white heterosexual. 'The Maids' was written for men who should make the feminine element visible. You don't have a fixed identity and immediately fall over. This has nothing to do with enlightened proletarians. You are in a hopeless prison situation and are devious to excess. "

- Sophie Rois : "I am not a body-controlled animal", Vienna 2008

Reception history

The maids were premiered on April 17, 1947 at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris - as a prelude to Giraudoux 's The Apollo von Belac . The production was by Louis Jouvet , the set by Christian Bérard , the costumes by Jeanne Lanvin . The maids were portrayed by Yvette Etiévant (Claire) and Monique Mélinand (Solange), the Madame by Yolande Laffon . The play was largely negative in the press, but there were still 92 performances. Jouvet used the second text version for his production, the first text version, published in 1947 by L'Arbalète, was only performed in Paris in 1954, with Tania Balachova .

Translations into German were done by Gerhard Hock and Simon Werle . The German premiere took place in Bonn in 1957. The piece has been translated into numerous other languages ​​and is played worldwide. Performances with an all-male cast, as requested by the author, are rare.

Award

  • 1947: Prix de la Pléiade

Productions on German-speaking stages (selection)

Film adaptations

Settings

  • The setting by the British composer John Lunn was shown at the Dresden Semperoper , among others .
  • The Swedish composer Peter Bengtson set the work to music under the title "Jungfrurna" (The Virgins).

ballet

expenditure

  • Jean Genet: The maids. Tragedy . Translated from the French by Gerhard Hock. Merlin-Verlag, Hamburg 1957
    • The same translation was also published by Volk und Welt, Berlin 1984
  • Jean Genet: The Maids , Merlin Theater 2000, ISBN 978-3-87536-200-8 .
  • Jean Genet. Works in individual volumes . Volume 8: Dramas: Part 1 , translated by Ulrich Zieger , afterword by Andreas J. Meyer , editorial note by Friedrich Flemming, Merlin, Gifkendorf 2014, ISBN 978-3-87536-278-7 .

literature

Web links

  • Vitus Theater: "The Maids" , scene on YouTube, performance of the Virus Theater with Monika Thomaschütz (Claire), Linda Haluschan-Springer (Solange) and Tina Klimbacher (Madam); Direction and production: Patrick Steinwidder; Premiere on September 9, 2009, Volxhaus Klagenfurt
  • On the stage : evaluation and criticism of Die Zofen by Jean Genet, director: Ivan Panteleev, premiere: December 2, 2017, Deutsches Theater Berlin

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ina Hartwig : There were harder days , work edition, Volume VII: In Jean Genet's poems the prisoner is elevated to an erotic icon, Frankfurter Rundschau , September 1, 2004, accessed on December 14, 2016.
  2. ↑ Wissen.de: Genet, Jean: Die Zofen , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  3. ↑ Volker Woltersdorff: No minority dramas - homosexual minorities and Fassbinder's films , p. 231, in Nicole Colin, Franziska Schößler, Nike Thurn (ed.): Prekäre Obsession: Minoritäten im Werk von Rainer Werner Fassbinder , transcript Verlag 2014.
  4. ↑ Norbert Mayer: Sophie Rois: "I am not a body-controlled animal" ( Memento from December 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) , interview with the actress, Die Presse (Vienna), June 2, 2008.
  5. ↑ Karin Cerny: Gert Voss and Ignaz Kirchner in "The Maids" at the Akademietheater Vienna Der Verführer und seine Zerrbild , Berliner Zeitung , February 8, 2000, accessed on December 14, 2016.
  6. ^ Wolfgang Höbel : "Maid" premiere in Vienna: Wetlands behind glass , Der Spiegel (Hamburg), June 5, 2008, accessed on November 26, 2016.
  7. ^ ARD : Die Maofen , recording from October 2008 in the Volksbühne Berlin, accessed on November 26, 2016.
  8. ^ Theater Phönix : Die Mafen von Jean Genet , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  9. ↑ YouTube : The Maids, Jean Genet Part 1 , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  10. ↑ Bernd Noack : The merciless sisters , Der Spiegel (Hamburg), May 19, 2014, accessed on November 26, 2016.
  11. ↑ Vimeo: Die Zofen, Münchner Kammerspiele , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  12. ↑ YouTube : Schauspielhaus Zürich: "The Maids" by Jean Genet (directed by Bastian Kraft) , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  13. ↑ Barbara Villiger Heilig: "The Maids" at the Schauspielhaus Zurich: In the context of art , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 13, 2015, accessed on November 26, 2016.
  14. ^ Theater in the monastery (Bornheim): Press comments Dir Maid , accessed on November 26, 2016.
  15. ↑ : Zombie "Maid": A macabre festival of the senses , Neue Westfälische (Bielefeld), November 1, 2015, accessed on November 26, 2016.
  16. ^ Mödling in words and pictures: Stadttheater premiere "Die Zofen" , accessed on December 7, 2017
  17. ^ Wuppertaler Bühnen und Sinfonieorchester GmbH: DIE ZOFEN. Retrieved November 6, 2017 .
  18. ^ IMDb : The Maids (1964) , accessed on December 14, 2016
  19. ^ IMDb : The Maids (1975) , accessed December 14, 2016