Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty

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Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty

• Nathaniel Baumgardner

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Antonin Artaud

• Born in Marseille 1896
• At Age 4 suffered from Meningitis
• Also suffered from Neuralgia, Stammering and
  severe bouts of Depression.
• As a teenager spent five years in a sanatorium,
  where he became addicted to laudanum.
• When he was twenty years he was drafted into the
  army, but was released because of mental
  instability.
• In his late twenties Artaud began writing and
  working with the Surrealist movement
• He was rejected for not denouncing theatre as
  Bourgeois

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• While in Paris He began develop an interest in
  cinema.
• Wrote the script for the first Surrealist film Le
  Coquille et la Clergyman.
• Also acts in Fait Divers and Surcourt--le roi des
  corsairs (1924) Abel Gance's Napoleon Boneparte
  (1925) La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)
  Tarakanowa (1929) G. W. Pabst's
  Dreigroschenoper, made in Berlin (1930)
• He also works as a costume designer.
• Founds Theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and
  Robert Arron
• In the Early 1930s wrote the Manifestos of the
  Theatre of Cruelty, which outlined his theory on
  Drama and how plays should be presented.

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• In 1935 presents the first play using the Theater
  of Cruelty method.
• Les Cenci adapted from Shelly and Stendhal.
• The play is a complete failure.
• Artaud spends most of the last nine years of his
  life in mental institutions being treated for
  schizophrenia.
• He is released in 1948
• Returns to Paris where he eventually dies of
  cancer.

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The Theatre of Cruelty

• Two Manifestos Published in 1932 and 1933
• Cruelty was expressed the discomfort it made the
  audience feel rather than physical malice.
• Theatre should address the audience at a
  subconscious level that speaks to the divisions
  within themselves and each other.
• Images and sounds over spoken word

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First Manifesto -Themes

• The Spectacle
• The Mise En Scene
• The Language of the Stage
• Musical Instruments
• Lights, Lighting
• Costumes
• The Stage
• ObjectsMasksAccessories
• The Set
• Immediacy
• Works
• Specatcle
• The Actor
• The interpretation
• The Cinema
• Cruelty
• The Public
• The Program

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Second Manifesto-The Play

• The Conquest of Mexico
• Poses the question of Colonization
• Compares Christianity with ancient Mexican
  religions
• Four Acts
• Warning Signs, Confessions, Convulsions,
  Abdication

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A civlized man judges and is judged according to
his behavior, but even the term civilized leads
to confusion a cultivated civilized man is
regarded as a person instructed in systems, a
person who thinks in forms signs and
representations-- a monster whose faculty of
deriving thoughts from actions instead of
identifying acts with thoughts, is developed to
an absurdity Artuad from The Theatre and its
Double