![]() ![]() ![]() Artaud believed that theatre should reflect his nihilistic view of the universe, creating an uncanny connection between his own thinking and Nietzsche's :ĭefinition of cruelty informs Artaud's own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience. First, it is employed metaphorically to describe the essence of human existence. Lee Jamieson has identified four ways in which Artaud used the term cruelty. Eric Bentley), Penguin, 1968, p.66Įvidently, Artaud's various uses of the term cruelty must be examined to fully understand his ideas. – Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty, in The Theory of the Modern Stage (ed. 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. 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. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space. 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. 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 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". 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 Balinese. 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. ![]()
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