Antonin Artaud
Encyclopedia
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud (4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948) was a French
playwright
, poet
, actor
and theatre director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine "little Anthony", and was among a list of names which Artaud used throughout his writing career.
, France
, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud. Both his parents were natives of Smyrna
(modern-day İzmir
), and he was greatly affected by his Greek ancestry. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis
, which gave Artaud a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia
, stammering and severe bouts of clinical depression
, which was treated with the use of opium — resulting in a life-long addiction.
Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium
stays for their temperamental son, which were both prolonged and expensive. This lasted five years, with a break of two months in June and July 1916, when Artaud was conscripted
into the French Army
. He was allegedly discharged due to his self-induced habit of sleepwalking
. During Artaud's "rest cures" at the sanatorium, he read Arthur Rimbaud
, Charles Baudelaire
and Edgar Allan Poe
. In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum
for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiate
s.
theatre. Whilst training and performing with the most acclaimed directors of the day, most notably Charles Dullin and Georges Pitoeff, he continued to write both poetry and essays. At the age of 27, he mailed some of his poems to the journal La Nouvelle Revue Française; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière
, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship in letters had developed. This epistolary work, Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière, was Artaud's first major publication.
In 1925, Artaud effectively assumed control directing the surrealist movement, writing many articles for The Surrealist Revolution and running the Bureau of Surrealist Research
, a loose affiliation of surrealists interested in exploring automatic writing, recording dreams and engaging in anything which rejected rationality
. After about eighteen months, he grew increasingly frustrated by what he perceived as the surrealists' unwillingness to do any more than disrupt bourgeois art events and create scandal. They in turn, spearheaded by André Breton who possibly felt his leadership of the movement to be threatened by Artaud's dynamic energy and extreme radical commitment, set about ejecting him from the group after he publicly began to call their revolutionary "bluff".
Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema
as well, writing the scenario for the first Surrealist film, The Seashell and the Clergyman
(1928), directed by Germaine Dulac
. Dali and Buñuel, two key Spanish surrealists, took their cue for Un Chien Andalou
(1929) from this. He also acted in Abel Gance
's Napoleon (1927) in the role of Jean-Paul Marat
, and in Carl Theodor Dreyer
's The Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928) as the monk Massieu. Artaud's portrayal of Marat used exaggerated movements to convey the fire of Marat's personality.
In 1926-28, Artaud ran the Alfred Jarry
Theatre, along with Roger Vitrac
. He produced and directed original works by Vitrac, as well as pieces by Claudel
and Strindberg
. The theatre advertised that they would produce Artaud's play Jet de sang in their 1926-1927 season, but it was never mounted and was not premiered until 40 years later. The Theatre was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including André Gide
, Arthur Adamov
, and Paul Valéry
.
In 1931, Artaud saw Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial Exposition. Although he did not fully understand the intentions and ideas behind traditional Balinese performance, it influenced many of his ideas for Theatre. Also during this year, the 'First Manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty' was published in La Nouvelle Revue Française which would later appear as a chapter in The Theatre and Its Double. In 1935, Artaud's production of his adaptation of Shelley
's The Cenci
premiered. The Cenci was a commercial failure, although it employed innovative sound effects—including the first theatrical use of the electronic instrument the Ondes Martenot
--and had a set designed by Balthus
.
After the production failed, Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico
, where in 1936 he met his first (Mexican) Parisian friend, the painter Federico Cantú when he gave lectures on the decadence of Western civilization. He also studied and lived with the Tarahumaran people
and experimented with peyote
, recording his experiences, which were later released in a volume called Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. The content of this work closely resembles the poems of his later days, concerned primarily with the supernatural
. Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the land of the Tarahumaras. Having deserted his last supply of the drug at a mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse, and soon resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum". Artaud would return to opiates later in life.
In 1937, Artaud returned to France where he obtained a walking stick of knotted wood that he believed belonged not only to St. Patrick, but also Lucifer
and Jesus Christ. Artaud traveled to Ireland in an effort to return the staff, though he spoke very little English and was unable to make himself understood. The majority of his trip was spent in a hotel room that he was unable to pay for. On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two crew members and retaliated. He was arrested and put in a straitjacket
.
His best-known work, The Theatre and Its Double, was published in 1938. This book contained the two manifestos of the Theatre of Cruelty
.
, friends of Artaud had him transferred to the psychiatric hospital
in Rodez
, well inside Vichy
territory, where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdière. Ferdière began administering electroshock treatments
to eliminate Artaud's symptoms, which included various delusions and odd physical tics. The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology
charts, and drawing disturbing images, were symptoms of mental illness
. The electro-shock treatments have created much controversy, although it was during these treatments — in conjunction with Ferdière's art therapy
— that Artaud began writing and drawing again, after a long dormant period. In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine
. Current psychiatric literature describes Artaud as having schizophrenia
, with a clear psychotic
break late in life and schizotypal symptoms throughout life.
Artaud was encouraged to write by his friends, and interest in his work was rekindled. He visited an exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh
which resulted in a study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société [Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society], published by K éditeur, Paris, 1947 which won a critics' prize. He recorded [To Have Done With the Judgment of god] between 22 and 29 November 1947. This work was shelved by Wladimir Porché, the director of the French Radio, the day before its scheduled airing on 2 February 1948. The performance was prohibited partially as a result of its scatological, anti-American, and anti-religious references and pronouncements, but also because of its general randomness, with a cacophony of xylophonic
sounds mixed with various percussive elements. While remaining true to his Theatre of Cruelty
and reducing powerful emotions and expressions into audible sounds, Artaud had utilized various, somewhat alarming cries, screams, grunts, onomatopoeia, and glossolalia
.
As a result, Fernand Pouey, the director of dramatic and literary broadcasts for French radio, assembled a panel to consider the broadcast of Among the approximately 50 artists, writers, musicians, and journalists present for a private listening on 5 February 1948 were Jean Cocteau
, Paul Éluard
, Raymond Queneau
, Jean-Louis Barrault
, René Clair
, Jean Paulhan
, Maurice Nadeau
, Georges Auric
, Claude Mauriac
, and René Char
. Although the panel felt almost unanimously in favor of Artaud's work, Porché refused to allow the broadcast. Pouey left his job and the show was not heard again until 23 February 1948 at a private performance at the Théâtre Washington.
In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died shortly afterwards on 4 March 1948, alone in the psychiatric clinic, seated on his bed, allegedly holding his left shoe. It was suspected that he died from a lethal dose of the drug chloral hydrate
, although it is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality. Thirty years later, French radio finally broadcast the performance of
In his book The Theatre and Its Double
, which contained the first and second manifesto for a "Theatre of Cruelty," Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern
forms of theatre, particularly the Bali
nese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a "Theatre of Cruelty
". At one point, he stated that by cruelty
he meant not exclusively sadism
or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality
. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.
Evidently, Artaud's various uses of the term cruelty must be examined to fully understand his ideas. Lee Jamieson
has identified four ways in which Artaud used the term cruelty. First, it is employed metaphorically to describe the essence of human existence. Artaud believed that theatre should reflect his nihilistic
view of the universe, creating an uncanny connection between his own thinking and Nietzsche's :
Artaud's second use of the term (according to Jamieson), is as a form of discipline. Although Artaud wanted to "reject form and incite chaos" (Jamieson, p. 22), he also promoted strict discipline and rigor in his performance techniques. A third use of the term was ‘cruelty as theatrical presentation’. The Theatre of Cruelty aimed to hurl the spectator into the centre of the action, forcing them to engage with the performance on an instinctive level. For Artaud, this was a cruel, yet necessary act upon the spectator designed to shock them out of their complacency:
Artaud wanted to (but never did) put the audience in the middle of the 'spectacle' (his term for the play), so they would be 'engulfed and physically affected by it'. He referred to this layout as being like a 'vortex' - a constantly shifting shape - 'to be trapped and powerless'.
Finally, Artaud used the term to describe his philosophical views, which will be outlined in the following section.
Artaud saw suffering as essential to existence and thus rejected all utopias as inevitable dystopia
. He denounced the degradation of civilization, yearned for cosmic purification, and called for an ecstatic loss of the self. Hence Jane Goodall
considers Artaud to be a modern Gnostic while Ulli Seegers stresses the Hermetic
elements in his works.
A very important study on the Artaud work comes from Jacques Derrida
. According to the philosopher, as theatrical writer and actor, Artaud is the embodiment of both an aggressive and reparative gesture, which strucks, sounds out, is harsh in a dramatic way and with critical determination as well. Identifying life as art, he was critically focused on the western culture social drama, to point out and denying the double-dealing on which is based the western theatre tradition; he worked on the whirlpool of feelings, lunatic expression, being subjugated to a counter-force which exactly comes out from the gesture.
Definitely, the Artaud work gave life to all of what has never been admitted in art, all the torment and the labour into the creator consciousness, which is about the research of the meaning of making a work of art.
, Shakespeare, Poe
, Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry
, and André Masson
.
Mötley Crüe
named the Theatre of Pain
album after reading his proposal for a Theatre of Cruelty, much as Christian Death
had with their album Only Theatre of Pain
. The band Bauhaus
included a song about the playwright, called "Antonin Artaud", on their album Burning from the Inside
http://www.waste.org/bauhaus/l/antoninartaud.html. Charles Bukowski
also claimed him as a major influence on his work. Influential Argentine
progressive rock
band Pescado Rabioso
recorded an album titled Artaud (album)
. Their leader Luis Alberto Spinetta
wrote the lyrics partly basing them on Artaud's writings. Composer John Zorn
has four records, "Astronome", "Moonchild", "Six Litanies for Heliogabalus" (see Heliogabalus
) and "The Crucible" dedicated to Artaud.
Theatrical practitioner Peter Brook
took inspiration from Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" in a series of workshops that led up to his well-known production of Marat/Sade
. The Living Theatre was also heavily influenced by him, as was much English-language experimental theatre
and performance art
; Karen Finley
, Spalding Gray
, Liz LeCompte, Richard Foreman
, Charles Marowitz
, Sam Shepard
, Joseph Chaikin
, and more all named Artaud as one of their influences.
Poet Allen Ginsberg
claimed his introduction to Artaud, specifically "To Have Done with the Judgement of god", by Carl Solomon
had a tremendous influence on his most famous poem "Howl
".
The popular mid-twentieth century poet and lyricist Jim Morrison was directly influenced by Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. He employed a conscious, but sometimes unconscious, method of arousing the so-called "Rock Music" audience to face "reality", cathartically. He failed in this effort a majority of the time, often over-estimating the potential of the audience to transcend the bounds of superficial fandom and fad-induced behavior. Morrison enrolled in and attended Jack Hirschman's famous course on Artaud at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1964, while a undergraduate student majoring in Cinematography and Theatre.
The novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi
includes a debate between artists and poets concerning the merits of Artaud's "multiple talents" in comparison to the singular talents of other French writers.
Artaud also had a profound influence on the philosophers Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari
, who borrowed Artaud's phrase "the body without organs" to describe their conception
of the virtual dimension of the body and, ultimately, the basic substratum of reality.
The survival horror video game Silent Hill: Origins contains a segment in which the protagonist must solve puzzles within the "Artaud Theatre", which is in the town of Silent Hill
.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and theatre director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine "little Anthony", and was among a list of names which Artaud used throughout his writing career.
Background
Antonin Artaud was born in MarseilleMarseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud. Both his parents were natives of Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
(modern-day İzmir
Izmir
Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...
), and he was greatly affected by his Greek ancestry. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
, which gave Artaud a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia
Neuralgia
Neuralgia is pain in one or more nerves that occurs without stimulation of pain receptor cells. Neuralgia pain is produced by a change in neurological structure or function rather than by the excitation of pain receptors that causes nociceptive pain. Neuralgia falls into two categories: central...
, stammering and severe bouts of clinical depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, which was treated with the use of opium — resulting in a life-long addiction.
Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
stays for their temperamental son, which were both prolonged and expensive. This lasted five years, with a break of two months in June and July 1916, when Artaud was conscripted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the French Army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
. He was allegedly discharged due to his self-induced habit of sleepwalking
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness...
. During Artaud's "rest cures" at the sanatorium, he read Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum
Laudanum
Laudanum , also known as Tincture of Opium, is an alcoholic herbal preparation containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight ....
for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiate
Opiate
In medicine, the term opiate describes any of the narcotic opioid alkaloids found as natural products in the opium poppy plant.-Overview:Opiates are so named because they are constituents or derivatives of constituents found in opium, which is processed from the latex sap of the opium poppy,...
s.
Paris
In March 1920, Artaud moved to Paris to pursue a career as a writer, and instead discovered he had a talent for avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
theatre. Whilst training and performing with the most acclaimed directors of the day, most notably Charles Dullin and Georges Pitoeff, he continued to write both poetry and essays. At the age of 27, he mailed some of his poems to the journal La Nouvelle Revue Française; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière was a French "man of letters". He edited La Nouvelle Revue Française from 1919 until his death...
, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship in letters had developed. This epistolary work, Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière, was Artaud's first major publication.
In 1925, Artaud effectively assumed control directing the surrealist movement, writing many articles for The Surrealist Revolution and running the Bureau of Surrealist Research
Bureau of Surrealist Research
The Bureau of Surrealist Research, also known as the Centrale Surréaliste or "Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries" was a Paris-based office in which a loosely affiliated group of Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and conduct interviews in order to "gather all the...
, a loose affiliation of surrealists interested in exploring automatic writing, recording dreams and engaging in anything which rejected rationality
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
. After about eighteen months, he grew increasingly frustrated by what he perceived as the surrealists' unwillingness to do any more than disrupt bourgeois art events and create scandal. They in turn, spearheaded by André Breton who possibly felt his leadership of the movement to be threatened by Artaud's dynamic energy and extreme radical commitment, set about ejecting him from the group after he publicly began to call their revolutionary "bluff".
Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
as well, writing the scenario for the first Surrealist film, The Seashell and the Clergyman
The Seashell and the Clergyman
The Seashell and the Clergyman is considered by many to be the first surrealist film.-Production background:The film was directed by Germaine Dulac, from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud, and premiered in Paris on 9 February 1928...
(1928), directed by Germaine Dulac
Germaine Dulac
Germaine Dulac was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film...
. Dali and Buñuel, two key Spanish surrealists, took their cue for Un Chien Andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
(1929) from this. He also acted in Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
's Napoleon (1927) in the role of Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...
, and in Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...
's The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...
(1928) as the monk Massieu. Artaud's portrayal of Marat used exaggerated movements to convey the fire of Marat's personality.
In 1926-28, Artaud ran the Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
Theatre, along with Roger Vitrac
Roger Vitrac
Roger Vitrac was a French surrealist playwright and poet.Born in Pinsac, Roger Vitrac moved to Paris in 1910. As a young man, he was influenced by symbolism and the writings of Lautréamont and Alfred Jarry, and he developed a passion for theatre and poetry...
. He produced and directed original works by Vitrac, as well as pieces by Claudel
Claudel
Claudel is the surname of:*Aurélie Claudel , French model*Camille Claudel , French sculptor and graphic artist*Paul Claudel , French poet and diplomat*Philippe Claudel , French writer and film director...
and Strindberg
Strindberg
Strindberg may refer to:People* August Strindberg , Swedish dramatist and painter* Nils Strindberg , Swedish photographer* Anita Strindberg , Swedish actor* Henrik Strindberg , Swedish composerOther...
. The theatre advertised that they would produce Artaud's play Jet de sang in their 1926-1927 season, but it was never mounted and was not premiered until 40 years later. The Theatre was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov was a playwright, one of the foremost exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd.Adamov was born in Kislovodsk in Russia to a wealthy Armenian family, which lost its wealth in 1917...
, and Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
.
In 1931, Artaud saw Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial Exposition. Although he did not fully understand the intentions and ideas behind traditional Balinese performance, it influenced many of his ideas for Theatre. Also during this year, the 'First Manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty' was published in La Nouvelle Revue Française which would later appear as a chapter in The Theatre and Its Double. In 1935, Artaud's production of his adaptation of Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
's The Cenci
The Cenci
The Cenci, A Tragedy, in Five Acts is a verse drama in five acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Italian family, the Cencis . Shelley composed the play at Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, from May to August 5, 1819...
premiered. The Cenci was a commercial failure, although it employed innovative sound effects—including the first theatrical use of the electronic instrument the Ondes Martenot
Ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...
--and had a set designed by Balthus
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
.
After the production failed, Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, where in 1936 he met his first (Mexican) Parisian friend, the painter Federico Cantú when he gave lectures on the decadence of Western civilization. He also studied and lived with the Tarahumaran people
Tarahumara
The Rarámuri or Tarahumara are a Native American people of northwestern Mexico who are renowned for their long-distance running ability...
and experimented with peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
, recording his experiences, which were later released in a volume called Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. The content of this work closely resembles the poems of his later days, concerned primarily with the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
. Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the land of the Tarahumaras. Having deserted his last supply of the drug at a mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse, and soon resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum". Artaud would return to opiates later in life.
In 1937, Artaud returned to France where he obtained a walking stick of knotted wood that he believed belonged not only to St. Patrick, but also Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
and Jesus Christ. Artaud traveled to Ireland in an effort to return the staff, though he spoke very little English and was unable to make himself understood. The majority of his trip was spent in a hotel room that he was unable to pay for. On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two crew members and retaliated. He was arrested and put in a straitjacket
Straitjacket
A straitjacket is a garment shaped like a jacket with overlong sleeves and is typically used to restrain a person who may otherwise cause harm to themselves or others. Once the arms are inserted into the straitjacket's sleeves, they are then crossed across the chest...
.
His best-known work, The Theatre and Its Double, was published in 1938. This book contained the two manifestos of the Theatre of Cruelty
Theatre of Cruelty
The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
.
Final years
The return from Ireland brought about the beginning of the final phase of Artaud's life, which was spent in different asylums. When France was occupied by the NazisNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, friends of Artaud had him transferred to the psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
in Rodez
Rodez
Rodez is a town and commune in southern France, in the Aveyron department, of which it is the capital. Its inhabitants are called Ruthénois.-History:Existing from at least the 5th century BC, Rodez was founded by the Celts...
, well inside Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
territory, where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdière. Ferdière began administering electroshock treatments
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
to eliminate Artaud's symptoms, which included various delusions and odd physical tics. The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
charts, and drawing disturbing images, were symptoms of mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
. The electro-shock treatments have created much controversy, although it was during these treatments — in conjunction with Ferdière's art therapy
Art therapy
Because of its dual origins in art and psychotherapy, art therapy definitions vary. They commonly either lean more toward the ART art-making process as therapeutic in and of itself, "art as therapy," or focus on the psychotherapeutic transference process between the therapist and the client who...
— that Artaud began writing and drawing again, after a long dormant period. In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris....
. Current psychiatric literature describes Artaud as having schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, with a clear psychotic
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
break late in life and schizotypal symptoms throughout life.
Artaud was encouraged to write by his friends, and interest in his work was rekindled. He visited an exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
which resulted in a study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société [Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society], published by K éditeur, Paris, 1947 which won a critics' prize. He recorded [To Have Done With the Judgment of god] between 22 and 29 November 1947. This work was shelved by Wladimir Porché, the director of the French Radio, the day before its scheduled airing on 2 February 1948. The performance was prohibited partially as a result of its scatological, anti-American, and anti-religious references and pronouncements, but also because of its general randomness, with a cacophony of xylophonic
Xylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
sounds mixed with various percussive elements. While remaining true to his Theatre of Cruelty
Theatre of Cruelty
The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
and reducing powerful emotions and expressions into audible sounds, Artaud had utilized various, somewhat alarming cries, screams, grunts, onomatopoeia, and glossolalia
Glossolalia
Glossolalia or speaking in tongues is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables, often as part of religious practice. The significance of glossolalia has varied with time and place, with some considering it a part of a sacred language...
.
As a result, Fernand Pouey, the director of dramatic and literary broadcasts for French radio, assembled a panel to consider the broadcast of Among the approximately 50 artists, writers, musicians, and journalists present for a private listening on 5 February 1948 were Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
, Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
, Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
, René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
, Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member of the Académie Française...
, Maurice Nadeau
Maurice Nadeau
Maurice Nadeau is a French writer and editor. He was born in Paris. One of his well-known works, translated into several languages, is the Histoire du surréalisme , published in French in 1944 and in English 21 years later, translated by Richard Howard. Nadeau turned 100 in May 2011.- External...
, Georges Auric
Georges Auric
Georges Auric was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was a child prodigy and at age 15 he had his first compositions published. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Georges Caussade, and under the composer Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum...
, Claude Mauriac
Claude Mauriac
Claude Mauriac was a French author and journalist, eldest son of the author François Mauriac.He was the personal secretary of Charles de Gaulle from 1944 to 1949, before becoming a cinema critic and arts person of Figaro. He is the author of several novels and essays, and co-scripted the movie of...
, and René Char
René Char
René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
. Although the panel felt almost unanimously in favor of Artaud's work, Porché refused to allow the broadcast. Pouey left his job and the show was not heard again until 23 February 1948 at a private performance at the Théâtre Washington.
In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died shortly afterwards on 4 March 1948, alone in the psychiatric clinic, seated on his bed, allegedly holding his left shoe. It was suspected that he died from a lethal dose of the drug chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate is a sedative and hypnotic drug as well as a chemical reagent and precursor. The name chloral hydrate indicates that it is formed from chloral by the addition of one molecule of water. Its chemical formula is C2H3Cl3O2....
, although it is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality. Thirty years later, French radio finally broadcast the performance of
Theatre of Cruelty
Artaud believed that theatre should affect the audience as much as possible, therefore he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements.In his book The Theatre and Its Double
Theatre and its Double
The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays by French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud and published in 1938....
, which contained the first and second manifesto for a "Theatre of Cruelty," Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern
Eastern world
__FORCETOC__The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of Eastern Asia or geographically the Eastern Culture...
forms of theatre, particularly the Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
nese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a "Theatre of Cruelty
Theatre of Cruelty
The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
". At one point, he stated that by cruelty
Cruelty
Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering, and even positive pleasure in inflicting it. If this is supported by a legal or social framework, then receives the name of perversion. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept....
he meant not exclusively sadism
Sadism and masochism
Sadomasochism broadly refers to the receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation. The name originates from two authors on the subject, Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch...
or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.
- The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.
- – Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty, in The Theory of the Modern Stage (ed. Eric Bentley), Penguin, 1968, p.66
Evidently, Artaud's various uses of the term cruelty must be examined to fully understand his ideas. Lee Jamieson
Lee Jamieson
Lee Jamieson , is an English author, journalist and lecturer.-Biography:Jamieson graduated with a first-class BA honours degree from DeMontfort University and a MA with Distinction from University of Warwick...
has identified four ways in which Artaud used the term cruelty. First, it is employed metaphorically to describe the essence of human existence. Artaud believed that theatre should reflect his nihilistic
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
view of the universe, creating an uncanny connection between his own thinking and Nietzsche's :
[Nietzsche's] definition of cruelty informs Artaud's own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience ... Although Artaud did not formally cite Nietzsche, [their writing] contains a familiar persuasive authority, a similar exuberant phraseology, and motifs in extremis ...
- – Lee Jamieson
Lee JamiesonLee Jamieson , is an English author, journalist and lecturer.-Biography:Jamieson graduated with a first-class BA honours degree from DeMontfort University and a MA with Distinction from University of Warwick...
, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.21-22
Artaud's second use of the term (according to Jamieson), is as a form of discipline. Although Artaud wanted to "reject form and incite chaos" (Jamieson, p. 22), he also promoted strict discipline and rigor in his performance techniques. A third use of the term was ‘cruelty as theatrical presentation’. The Theatre of Cruelty aimed to hurl the spectator into the centre of the action, forcing them to engage with the performance on an instinctive level. For Artaud, this was a cruel, yet necessary act upon the spectator designed to shock them out of their complacency:
Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distanceAesthetic distanceAesthetic distance refers to the gap between a viewer's conscious reality and the fictional reality presented in a work of art. When a reader becomes fully engrossed in the illusory narrative world of a book, the author has achieved a close aesthetic distance...
, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.
- – Lee Jamieson
Lee JamiesonLee Jamieson , is an English author, journalist and lecturer.-Biography:Jamieson graduated with a first-class BA honours degree from DeMontfort University and a MA with Distinction from University of Warwick...
, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.23
Artaud wanted to (but never did) put the audience in the middle of the 'spectacle' (his term for the play), so they would be 'engulfed and physically affected by it'. He referred to this layout as being like a 'vortex' - a constantly shifting shape - 'to be trapped and powerless'.
Finally, Artaud used the term to describe his philosophical views, which will be outlined in the following section.
Philosophical views
Imagination, to Artaud, was reality; he considered dreams, thoughts and delusions as no less real than the "outside" world. To him, reality appeared to be a consensus, the same consensus the audience accepts when they enter a theatre to see a play and, for a time, pretend that what they are seeing is real.Artaud saw suffering as essential to existence and thus rejected all utopias as inevitable dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
. He denounced the degradation of civilization, yearned for cosmic purification, and called for an ecstatic loss of the self. Hence Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE , is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National...
considers Artaud to be a modern Gnostic while Ulli Seegers stresses the Hermetic
Hermetic
* Hermeticism, a magical and religious movement stemming from the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus* Hermeticism , a literary movement in poetry started in Italy* Hermetics, the deliberate use of esoteric imagery...
elements in his works.
A very important study on the Artaud work comes from Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
. According to the philosopher, as theatrical writer and actor, Artaud is the embodiment of both an aggressive and reparative gesture, which strucks, sounds out, is harsh in a dramatic way and with critical determination as well. Identifying life as art, he was critically focused on the western culture social drama, to point out and denying the double-dealing on which is based the western theatre tradition; he worked on the whirlpool of feelings, lunatic expression, being subjugated to a counter-force which exactly comes out from the gesture.
Definitely, the Artaud work gave life to all of what has never been admitted in art, all the torment and the labour into the creator consciousness, which is about the research of the meaning of making a work of art.
Influence
Artaud was heavily influenced by seeing a Colonial Exposition of Balinese Theatre in Marseille. He read eclectically, inspired by authors and artists such as SenecaSeneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, Shakespeare, Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
, and André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
.
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
named the Theatre of Pain
Theatre of Pain
-Personnel:*Vince Neil - vocals*Mick Mars - guitar*Nikki Sixx - bass*Tommy Lee - drums, piano-Singles:*"Smokin' In the Boys Room" was released on June 24, 1985.*"Home Sweet Home" was released on September 30, 1985.-Charts:...
album after reading his proposal for a Theatre of Cruelty, much as Christian Death
Christian Death
Christian Death is an American deathrock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1979. The band was founded and fronted by Rozz Williams. Christian Death is most notable for their first album Only Theatre of Pain....
had with their album Only Theatre of Pain
Only Theatre of Pain
Only Theatre of Pain was the debut studio album of American deathrock band Christian Death, originally released by Frontier Records in 1982. The album is considered the harbinger of deathrock....
. The band Bauhaus
Bauhaus (band)
Bauhaus was an English rock band formed in Northampton in 1978. The group consisted of Peter Murphy , Daniel Ash , Kevin Haskins and David J . The band was originally Bauhaus 1919 before they dropped the numerical portion within a year of formation...
included a song about the playwright, called "Antonin Artaud", on their album Burning from the Inside
Burning from the Inside
-Personnel:*Peter Murphy – vocals, guitar*Daniel Ash – guitar, vocals*David J – bass, vocals*Kevin Haskins – drums-Production:*Arranged and produced by Bauhaus*Engineered and mixed by Derek Tomkins and Ted Sharp*Mastered by Arun Chakraverty...
http://www.waste.org/bauhaus/l/antoninartaud.html. Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
also claimed him as a major influence on his work. Influential Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
band Pescado Rabioso
Pescado Rabioso
Pescado Rabioso was a band or musical enterprise of Argentine musician Luis Alberto Spinetta from 1971 to 1973. In spite of its short life, it is still considered an important piece of Argentine rock history.-Discography:...
recorded an album titled Artaud (album)
Artaud (album)
Artaud is the fourth full-length album by Pescado Rabioso. The title is in reference of Antonin ArtaudAlthough Artaud was officially billed as the third Pescado Rabioso album, the Argentinean group had actually broken up by the time it was recorded...
. Their leader Luis Alberto Spinetta
Luis Alberto Spinetta
Luis Alberto Spinetta , is an Argentine musician. He is one of the most influential rock musicians of South America, and together with Charly García is considered the father of Argentine rock. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the residential neighbourhood of Belgrano...
wrote the lyrics partly basing them on Artaud's writings. Composer John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
has four records, "Astronome", "Moonchild", "Six Litanies for Heliogabalus" (see Heliogabalus
Heliogabalus
Heliogabalus may refer to:*The sun god Heliogabalus, the patron god of Emesa in the Roman province of Syria.*The Roman Emperor also known as Elagabalus.*Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, an album by John Zorn....
) and "The Crucible" dedicated to Artaud.
Theatrical practitioner Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
took inspiration from Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" in a series of workshops that led up to his well-known production of Marat/Sade
Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...
. The Living Theatre was also heavily influenced by him, as was much English-language experimental theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
; Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
, Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray
Spalding Rockwell Gray was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist and monologuist...
, Liz LeCompte, Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
, Charles Marowitz
Charles Marowitz
Charles Marowitz is an American critic, theatre director, and playwright who has been a regular columnist on Swans Commentary—a cultural-political bi-weekly—since 2004...
, Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
, Joseph Chaikin
Joseph Chaikin
Joseph Chaikin was an American theatre director, playwright, and pedagogue.-Early years:The youngest of five children, Chaikin was born to a poor Jewish family living in the Borough Park residential area of Brooklyn. At the age of six, he was struck with rheumatic fever, and he continued to...
, and more all named Artaud as one of their influences.
Poet Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
claimed his introduction to Artaud, specifically "To Have Done with the Judgement of god", by Carl Solomon
Carl Solomon
Carl Solomon was an American writer.-Biography:Solomon was born in the Bronx of New York City. His father's death in 1939 had a profoundly negative effect on his early life...
had a tremendous influence on his most famous poem "Howl
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...
".
The popular mid-twentieth century poet and lyricist Jim Morrison was directly influenced by Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. He employed a conscious, but sometimes unconscious, method of arousing the so-called "Rock Music" audience to face "reality", cathartically. He failed in this effort a majority of the time, often over-estimating the potential of the audience to transcend the bounds of superficial fandom and fad-induced behavior. Morrison enrolled in and attended Jack Hirschman's famous course on Artaud at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1964, while a undergraduate student majoring in Cinematography and Theatre.
The novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
includes a debate between artists and poets concerning the merits of Artaud's "multiple talents" in comparison to the singular talents of other French writers.
Artaud also had a profound influence on the philosophers Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
and Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
, who borrowed Artaud's phrase "the body without organs" to describe their conception
Body without organs
Gilles Deleuze introduced the notion of the "Body without Organs" in The Logic of Sense ; but it was not until his collaborative work with Félix Guattari that the BwO comes to prominence as one of Deleuze's major ideas.The term is borrowed from Antonin Artaud's radio play "To Have Done with...
of the virtual dimension of the body and, ultimately, the basic substratum of reality.
The survival horror video game Silent Hill: Origins contains a segment in which the protagonist must solve puzzles within the "Artaud Theatre", which is in the town of Silent Hill
Silent Hill
is a survival horror video game series consisting of seven installments published by Konami and its subsidiary Konami Digital Entertainment. The first four games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4, have been developed by an internal factor, Team Silent...
.
External links
- To Have Done with the Judgement of God (the renowned radio-play scenario)
- Works by Antonin Artaud (public domain in Canada)
- Site dedicated to A. Artaud
- Antonin Artaud profile page on Find-A-Grave an anachronistic film account of Artaud's life.
- Teatralnaya Laboratoriya of Vadim Maksimov. The only theatre in Russia, working according to the Artaud's system.Teatralnaya laboratoriyaTeatralnaya Laboratoriya of Vadim Maksimov is the only theatre in Russia that works using Antonin Artaud's theories on The Theatre of Cruelty. The theatre has been active in St...