tHE
pHiLOSOPHER'S
sTONE
aNTONIN aRTAUD
Antonin
Artaud, b. Sept. 4, 1896, d. Mar. 4, 1948, was a visionary French actor, playwright,
poet, and theorist. His idea of a theatre of cruelty, set down in his work Le
theatre et son double (1938-45; The
Theatre and Its Double, 1958), has significantly influenced modern notions
of theatrical performance. As a child, Artaud suffered from meningitis, and throughout
his life he was afflicted with mental disorders. During the 1920s he wrote poems
in the manner of the surrealists, acted in plays under such directors as Charles
Dullin and in films such as Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927), and began to
write his own plays and essays. He left the surrealists to form his Theatre Alfred
Jarry (1926) with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron, staging plays by such writers
as Strindberg and Claudel. In essays and manifestos, collected in Le Theatre
et son double, Artaud advocated a metaphysical theatre, linking spectator
and spectacle. He was influenced less by literature than by myth, ritual, Oriental
art, the gestures of Balinese dance, and the world of dreams. Artaud felt that
the theatre should give rise to numinous or religious feelings within the audience.
At certain points he likened theatre to a plague that attacks the audience, breaks
down its resistance, and cleanses it morally and spiritually. In the only play
that he wrote and directed according to his precepts, Les Cenci (1935;
Eng. trans., 1970), Artaud emphasized space, physicality, color, and sensual awareness
over text and language. When his production was deemed a failure, Artaud left
for Mexico in 1936 to study the ways of the Tarahumaras Indians. He wrote about
the experience in Au Pays des Tarahumaras (1945). When he returned to France
in 1937, he suffered a severe mental breakdown and was confined to the sanatorium
at Rodez until 1946.
Artaud's
theories influenced such theatre artists as Jean Louis Barrault, Roger Blin, Peter
Brook, the Living Theatre, Robert Wilson and the entire movement known as experimental
theatre.
=========================
tHE
pHiLOSOPHER'S sTONE Pages
hOME