LES PARAVENTS – A PUZZLE
A drama about colonialism, war and memories
No, I won’t deny it. In this work I just freaked out!
Jean Genet
Is Les Paravents a political work?
It is not my intention to present the Algerian War, but the more I try to get away from it, the more it makes its presence felt.
Genet himself says that his play is not about the Algerian War but that he wrote it while the War was going on and that that had a major influence on the style in which it is written.
In my opinion the theme of the work is not so much the scandal of war as the search for that psychological moment when everything changes, when everything becomes possible, when nothing has yet had time to happen – the moment when song makes its forceful entry. It is a search that is not very different from that of Rimbaud.
It is hard not to see in Les Paravents the kind of life that Genet himself dreamed of, not to interpret Said’s demise as the author’s withdrawal from literary composition in order to commit himself to the cause of the “revolted” – be they Black Panthers or Palestinians.
I should like to approach the work from the point of view of those who “grow up outside the garden, the thistles and the nettles of society”. I should like to see it through the eyes of those who are excluded from history, those who stray about unwanted, those who smell and rot for a long time before they die of hunger. But my primary aim is to produce drama.
Frédéric Fisbach
Jean Genet
Les Paravents
in French with German supertitles
Director Frédéric Fisbach
Stage Emanuel Clotus
Costumes Olga Karpinsky
17 and 18 August 2002
Performances begin at 8 p.m.
Stadtkino
Tickets are available from
the Festival Ticket Office
for € 30 For young people: € 15
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at