ANTONIN ARTAUD
LOOKING AT A MAN
Artaud Created the Theatre of Cruelty out of disgust at Western Theatre of his time, which he felt was too literature heavy. His theatre intended to abandon dialogue as a primary means for communication and instead would use a theatrical language which could appeal and use all human senses to express things words simply could not. For example music, dance, plastic arts, mimics, gesture, voice, inflection, architecture, lighting and decor.
Why does it matter that he should do this? Because he believed that the human psyche was like an iceberg where 90% of it lay under the surface. Artaud compared theatre to the plague by looking at what happens to ordinary human behavior during a vast epidemic and fight for survival...
"Situations which strip people of free will like this allow people to act more naturally impulsive without regard for any social norms. In theatre, as in the plague, there is a kind of strange sun, an unusually bright light by which the difficult, even the impossible, suddenly appears to be our natural medium...It resembles the plague’s freedom where, step by step, stage by stage, the victim’s character swells out, where the survivors gradually become imposing, superhuman beings" (Artaud, 1964).
Metaphysics asks philosophical questions such as ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Artaud was fascinated by a painting called ‘Lot and his Daughters’ by Lucas van Leydon. He says: “In any event I must say this painting is what theatre ought to be, if it only knew how to speak its own language. And I ask this question: how can it be that in the theatre, at least theatre as we know it in Europe, or rather in the West, everything specifically theatrical, that is to say everything which cannot be expressed in words or, if you prefer, everything that is not contained in dialogue has been left in the background?” (Artaud 1964, pg 26)
He thought that theatre should physically and mentally affect its audience. He called this ‘active metaphysics’: “ To make metaphysics out of the spoken language is to make language convey what it does not normally convey” (Artaud, 1964). Like Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English or music concerts; where a show with dance and song and theatricality of all sorts takes place before us, involving us in song dance and drink.
Alchemy is about understanding the innermost and unconscious part of your psyche which is supposed to be the main part of our being. Alchemy can also be defined as the way two individuals relate to one another i.e. their chemistry. For example, in Japanese Noh Theatre the intention of the play is for the audience and actors to reach a higher state of spirituality. In our theatre the ‘lines gain the upper hand’ and sometimes theatre becomes a branch of literature spoken by an actor on stage ( such as Miller’s The Price at The Lyceum Theatre 2011).
Artaud thinks that theatre is
"not aimed at solving social or psychological conflicts, to serve as a battle field for moral passions [Brecht], but to express objectively secret truths, to bring out in active gesture those elements of truth hidden under forms in their encounters with becoming” (Artaud 1964).
He says that it is impossible to ever make another person understand exactly what you understand in this world, and that by using words further reduces the chances of this understanding ever happening:
"Any true feeling in reality cannot be expressed. To do so is to betray it. True expression...creates a vacuum in thought...Any strong feeling produces an idea of emptiness within us, and lucid language which prevents this emptiness also prevents poetry appearing in thought. For this reason an image, an allegory, a form disguising what it means to reveal, has more meaning to the mind than...words or their analysis" (Artaud 1964, pg 51).
Artaud says we must do away with
"the idea of masterpieces reserved for the so called elite...And if for example the masses today no longer understand Oedipus Rex, I would venture to say Oedipus Rex is at fault as a play and not the masses” (Artaud 1964, Pg 53).
He says that one of the reasons for theatre’s decline in popularity is because...
...“for too long we have all been told theatre is all lies and illusion. Because for four hundred years, that is, since the Renaissance, we have, become accustomed to purely descriptive, narrative theatre, narrating Psychology” (Pg 55)
Artaud believed that theatre had the power to affect the appearance and structure of things and that bringing together audience and actor is...
..."just as complete, as true, even as decisive as bringing together two bodies in short lived debauchery is in life - Grotowski” (Artaud 1964, pg 57).
"A Theatre of Cruelty means theatre that is difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And on the level of performance, it has nothing to do with hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our individual anatomies...but the far more terrible, essential cruelty objects can practise on us. We are not free and the sky can still fall on our heads. And above all else, theatre is made to teach us this" (Artaud 1964, Pg 57).
What he means by ‘cruelty’ is the pursuit of happiness or effort.
The Theatre of Cruelty Manifesto
TECHNIQUE:
The theatre should show us all the things we all think and do and feel but do not say we do.
THEMES:
Not to bore.
THE MISE EN SCENE:
Should communicate above all else.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE STAGE:
He didn’t want to abandon spoken language altogether but to use it along with all other ways of communication. Giving words “the same importance they have in dreams”.
THE STAGE:
To abolish any separation between the stage and the auditorium.
THE INTERPRETATION:
Will be calculated like a code.
CRUELTY:
“Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle the theatre is not possible” – Technique ...The theatre will never find itself again i.e. constitute a means of true illusion by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his shimeras...pour out, on a level not illusory... (Artaud, 1964).
This made me think about Roman theatre where sex acts and murder were literally done on stage. As well as this the Gladiator matches were brutal entertainment, and further still to the medieval ages when hangings were a spectacle, burning witches at the fire was a spectacle and so was torture.
"Whether they admit it or not, whether a conscious or unconscious act, at heart audiences are searching for a poetic state of mind, a transcendent condition by means of love, drugs, war or insurrection" (Artaud 1964, Pg 88).
His theatre was not just to please the eyes, it was made to affect the mind hypnotically and our sensitivity- totally transportative.
"Theatre is reality’s magic, an outlet for an overfull life that does not enter into routine existence, breaking framework of visible, customary reality...A game, if you like, but a superior game where a fragment of what is called living is involved. Ultimately, life itself is at stake. (Artaud 1964, Appendix V11)"
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