Sometime before I had come out as a gay man (circa 1976) I attended an amazing performance of Jean Genet's play, The Maids, at Incarnate Word College (now known as University of the Incarnate Word) in San Antonio, Texas.
I knew about the play and the notoriously homosexual author because of my furtive readings in the high school and public libraries (the cards in the card catalog dog-eared and stained by the oil of surreptitious fingers of closeted gay boys and men like me). As if it were not extraordinary enough for a play by a known homosexual (and aggressively "degenerate") author to be performed at a college founded by Catholic nuns in an arch-conservative and homophobic Texas city (and nonetheless perversely apt for the author of a novel called Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs), the play was performed by male actors in drag, which was in accordance with Genet's (generally ignored) stage directions.
I wonder where they are now, those actors who brought that play to life so vividly and profoundly for me? Petrified as I was then by the shocking nature of the performance, I nevertheless knew that the play was a work of genius, and it reinforced what became a lifelong fascination with literature and art: my survival mechanism.
The incarnate, carnal, incarnadine Word ...
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