SOURCE: Homan, Sidney. “Genet, The Balcony: ‘You Must Now Go Home, Where Everything … Will Be Falser Than Here.’” In The Audience as Actor and Character: The Modern Theater of Beckett, Brecht, Genet, Ionesco, Pinter, Stoppard, and Williams, pp. 57-77. London: Bucknell University Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Homan examines the notions of truth and falsity and the audience's roll in creating meaning in The Balcony.

In The Balcony, … Genet's inquiry into what role can mean both onstage and in the world offstage confronts us from the very start. To the side of a “Bishop,” who is theatrically arrayed in a cleric's cope and the tragedian's cothurni, stands a rather ordinary young woman washing her hands, preparing for the role she must play to complement the role already assumed by the figure centerstage.¹ Near this woman, who is in transition from person to stage character, stands Irma, our audience...