O Balcão

"Everything here is false, and everything must be handled with extreme care." A writer and poet, Jean Genet did not see himself as a playwright, but he nonetheless used his aggressive writings for the stage to dissect social and literary norms. The above quote condenses the essence of “O Balcão” [The Balcony] (1955), a play that he obsessively revised and that makes the luxury brothel where it takes place into an archetype of the world and the theatre. After its premiere in November 2020, Nuno Cardoso brings us now back to this house of illusions, a place “near death, where all freedoms are possible”. In this carefully watched and prison-like space, characters who act as figures of power move about. Basically, there is a revolution that flares up and consumes. “Illusion is the play’s real theme,” according to Genet. The ambiguous between what is fake and what is real, the inside and the outside (of the brothel or the scene) are constant, exposing the machinery of the power’s farce and its social dynamics. In “O Balcão”, we are both voyeurs and figures in a puppet theatre where seeing and being seen are paramount. This game of mirrors is interrupted by poetry and derision. There, “with integrity and smiling”, as Genet wanted, we see ourselves in a ritual and as avatars of our desires.