Artaud (1896-1948)
and Theatre of Cruelty
Antonin Artaud was a French actor, playwright, writer, theatre director, designer and theorist. He was born in Marseille, France on September 4, 1896 and his childhood was marked by a series of illnesses and accidents. His health did not improve as he matured and for most of his life he was beset with ill health, pain and nervous depression. He was continually admitted and discharged from hospitals and mental institutions and developed addictions to hallucinatory and pain-reducing drugs like opium. His addiction and abuse of these substances began to have permanent effects and his mental health further deteriorated over the years. However, he always managed to write and his fluctuating but creative state of mind is represented throughout his many pieces of writing and painting.
Artaud was
a prolific and unusual writer and wrote poetry, commentaries and dramatic dialogues from an
early age. In 1921 he began writing for magazines like the Surrealists' journal
Literature. He
became a leading member of this group. Artaud also wrote outlines for a number
of films during the 1920's and early 1930's. He also acted in films like Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc (1927). During this period, he also
wrote and directed for the Paris stage in works that ranged Greek and Roman
classics, to plays by Strindberg to works by Surrealist friends like Roger
Vitrac.
He left the
surrealist group due to disagreements with Andre Breton. He soon after wrote
his first significant work Art and Death (1929). In 1931, Artaud
saw a Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial Exposition and he saw that
the body could express story, character and extreme emotion without words. Soon
after he started the draft of his most famous work The Theatre and its
Double which he
finally completed in 1937 and which was published in 1938. He tried throughout
this period to include these ideas in plays that he mounted during the 1930’s
through until the outbreak of war. Artaud’s 1935
adaptation of Shelley’s The Cenci involved
the first use of electronic sounds and sound effects on stage. Balthus also
designed a sensual and erotic set for this piece.
Artaud championed ideas for the creation of a Total Theatre that he hoped would transform existing expectations of theatrical experiences. Attacking theatre's dependency on scripts, he believed that theatre had turned into a mouthpiece for the playwright and argued that theatre practitioners should stop being bound to texts and should try to discover and articulate their own language. Artaud wanted theatre to return to magic and ritual and create a new theatrical language of totem and gesture where the theatrical space would be devoid of spoken dialogue and appeal primarily to the senses.
Artaud's attitudes, beliefs and style were influenced by psychology, mythology, Surrealism and his addiction to opiates and
heroin. He spent most of his life in and out of mental institutions. He once
visited Ireland with what he thought was St Patrick’s walking stick. He was
deported back to France and ended up in a straightjacket in a mental asylum in
Rodez for about nine years. He was released from the asylum in 1936 and died
within two years.
Artaud
said: "Words say little to the mind, compared to space thundering with
images and crammed with sounds… where the spectator is seized by the theatre as
by a whirlwind of higher forces."
Exercises
·
Timed
Breathing & Circular Nose Breathing
·
Walking
– Balancing the space as a plate, as a magnet, fluid circular movement,
straight lines, angles, combinations
·
Transitioning
from one to other, transferring and transitioning states
·
Use
the body as the voice. Try the following emotions using the parts of the body
to express the emotion or action – crying foot, grieving hand, laughing knee,
kissing elbow. Now try to express these emotions and actions with your whole
body.
·
Try to
have your whole body embody a complex emotional state such as Isolation,
Revolt, Cruelty, Assimilation and Disgust. Now see if two people interacting
can transfer their complex state to one another.
·
Artaud
believed that spoken language destroys theatre. Take a script and using only
the vowels of the dialogue as the text and the bodies of the actors create a
piece which assaults the senses.
Resources and References
No comments:
Post a Comment