I think it's much more direct, and this is the chief thing I've tried to do with this production. In 1961, I don't think black people understood as fully as we do today the difference between anger and hatred. Genet uses the word "hatred" constantly in this play. Anger is the kind of thing Ed Bullins is writing about, and Leroi Jones, with "eighteen muthah-fuckahs" and "I'm gonna kill yoah ass" and all that. Which is perfectly valid, and thef're absolutely right in what they're writing about. But Genet has gone one step behind, after the auger, when a man no longer says "I'm gonna kill yoah assi" He can sit back and say "I'm going to kill you." And smile, and smile, and be a villain, as the man said. An it's much more frightening. In 1961, when we did it in New York, anger and hatred were the same thing, and that play erupted on the stage, violently, because we'l all contained all this for so long. But if you look very carefully at the script. Genet has given you guides not to anger but to hate. He says, for instance, that our ideas must spring from hatred, or that politeness must be raised to such a pitch that it becomes monstrous. "Let Negroes persist to the point of madness in what they're condemned to be in their ebony, and their yellow eyes, and their cannibal tastes." That is what I tried to do in the production, to get this ice-cold hatred. To me, it's much more truthful to what the man wrote, and much more directly antagonistic than the stuff that's going on in this country.

Because it's a later evolutionary state?

To me it is, yes.

Isn't this post-anger hatred evident to you in, say, Jones's Slave? Do you see any of that detached, not passionate, not seething...

No.

You think it distinguishes Genet?

Yes, I do. I think that Jones is still about what he was about in Dutchman. "Bitch, I'll snatch your right tit off!" Which is anger. Valid anger.

Do you think Genet's perspective in The Blacks reflects the fact that he's white?

No. I was talking with the cast about this the other day. Genet is a criminal who has lived more of his life in jail than out of it. He's an overt homosexual and has lived his entire life that way.

So that he's socially a nigger?

Yes, someone who didn't fit. He's lived around blacks a great deal in prison life, and became fascinated with them. I wouldn't attempt to go into all the psychological reasons behind that. But in the sense that he's lived all his life as a misfit, and outcast as it were. I think he understands motivations of black hatred, as well-or perhaps because he's not black and he's not involved in the anger, and can deal with the hatred alone, perhaps better-than the black writers who have dealt with it.

He says, in a blurb at the beginning of the script, that it's absolutely necessary that at least one white man be in the audience for every performance. He should be greeted, if the audience is otherwise black, with a ceremony that includes keeping a white spotlight on him throughout the play. What does this mean to you in terms of the actorfaudience relationship that he wants to develop?

Two things. One, the play is not to be performed-when I say "not to be," it wasn't written to be performed for white people. Secondly, the premise of the play is, as Archibald, the master of ceremonies for the evening, safe at the beginning. "We must establish distance, a distance that is basic, and thereby make communication impossible." You have to have, if that confrontation between white and black is to take place and the entire stage is filled with black people, ideally, an all-white audience, in order for this exchange to take place.

Would you consider literally following Genet's instructions?

Yes. I was even going to have some of the black file into the audience with write masks, to say essentially, "Dig it, man, this is for white folk." But after I saw the size of the theatre, I decided to forget it.

If a white Harvard student or professor came to see this show, what impressions would he come away-with if you succeed in what you're trying to do?

I haven't the foggiest idea. I'm not copping out on the question, but I just don't know. It depends on what the climate is in Cambridge now, in 1970, and that's something I'm still trying to figure out. But I'll be looking for the reaction, because I'm interested in finding out.