Rehearsal Rooms as part of his experimental "Theatre of Cruelty" season with the Royal Shakespeare Company; he abandoned plans to stage the complete text, partly due to dissatisfaction with Bernard Frechtman's translation. There were no public performances: the rehearsal space was fitted out with seating to form an improvised theatre and the audience for the fully staged and costumed final version was by invitation only. An abridgement by Howard Brenton, with a running time of three hours, was mounted by Walter Donohue, the RSC literary editor, at the Bristol Old Vic studio in 1973. The play's first complete performance was directed by Per Verner Carlsson at the Stadsteater in Stockholm in 1964. Its five-hour-long production required six months of rehearsal preparation. Roger Blin directed the play's French première at the Odéon theatre in Paris, which opened on 21 April 1966. Genet became closely involved in rehearsals and published a series of letters to Blin about the theatre, the play, and the progress of its production. André Acquart designed the sets and costumes, providing via three collapsible platforms four levels which 27 gliding screens divided into different playing areas, as wells as "sumptuous and theatrical" costumes and make-up. Madeleine Renaud played Warda, Jean-Louis Barrault played the Mouth, María Casares played the Mother, and Amidou played Saïd. Blin directed a German production in Essen in November 1967. Minos Volanakis directed the play's US première in New York 1971. Patrice Chéreau directed a production at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers in Nanterre, near Paris, in 1983. In 1989 Joanne Akalaitis directed Paul Schmidt's translation at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, with Jesse Borrego as Said, and music by Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso. References Sources Dichy, Albert. 1993. "Chronology." In White (1993, xiii-xxxv). Frechtman, Bernard, trans. 1963. The Screens. By Jean Genet. London: Faber, 1987. . Lavery, Carl, Clare Finburgh, and Maria Shevtsova, eds. 2006. Jean Genet: Performance and Politics. Baisingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. . Oswald, Laura. 1989. Jean Genet and the Semiotics of Performance. Advances in Semiotics ser. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. . Savona, Jeannette L. 1983. Jean Genet. Grove Press Modern Dramatists ser. New York: Grove P. . Seaver, Richard, trans. 1972. Reflections on the Theatre and Other Writings. By Jean Genet. London: Faber. . Styan, J. L. 1981. Symbolism, Surrealism and the Absurd. Vol. 2 of Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. . White, Edmund.