This is Real brings the transgressive spirit of Jean Genet to life for America in 2026. Created by 2025 Obie Award-winning director David Herskovits and a cohort of artists, this new work features Genet’s obsessions: power, sex, and revolution. Genet was a thief, drifter, prostitute, who wrote from prison; his work affronted convention and challenged audiences to question their own lives. His artistic descendants include Ludlam, Jack Smith, David Bowie, and us at Target Margin Theater! We admire Genet’s unflinching honesty in confronting power without fear. He does not judge. He is never prim or pious. Our work swells with that bravery. This Is Real represents a vision of America as we have re-created it here and now. This is a patriotic play.

The source material for This Is Real has been pillaged from various Genet writings including his early memoirs about prison and criminal life; his first novel Our Lady of the Flowers; and all his plays from Deathwatch to The Balcony to The Screens. Genet’s final work, Prisoner of Love, has become a special inspiration. These vivid stories from years among Palestinian refugees and freedom fighters in the 1970s call out across the years with special immediacy now.

Above all, Genet was committed to representing the outsiders of our world, the counterculture, misfits, losers, and criminals. This is Real asks our audience to consider these degenerates anew. What is the beauty and wisdom of the outsider? Aren’t we, all of us, outsiders in our own ways?

This is Real runs March 1 through April 4 at the Doxsee Theater in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Tickets starting from $30: TargetMargin.org/ThisIsReal

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