Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty

To Antonin Artuad, theatre was not a matter of life and death, it was hell of lot more important than that. He wanted theatre to return to what it once was in primitive societies – pure magic – an event where a catharsis of the audience would take place. This catharsis that he spoke so passionately about was not to be fleeting, it was not to be the type of catharsis that would move the audience for just the rest of the evening, only to be forgotten about with the cold realities of the morning, rather it was to be a catharsis that was to change civilisation, entirely and forever. Artaud was rallying against traditional French theatre – the stock process of proposing a problem at the beginning of a play and providing a solution to this problem by the end of the play. He envisioned a theatre characterised by freedom, mystery and surrealism and he observed the roots of this type theatre in the work of Mallarme, Maeterlinck and Alfred Jarry. He was overwhelmed by a performance of Balinese theatre which he witnessed at the Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1931, it cemented his belief that a dramatic presentation should be an act of initiation during which the spectator will be awed and even terrified, even heightening to such a degree that they may even lose their reason. During this induced frenzy the spectator will be able to take onboard a complete new set of truths, revelations into the true nature of society. Artaud sought theatre to disturb the mind and open the subconscious, driving people back to their primitive nature. His method of achieving this goal was to base theatre in the arenas of danger and cruelty. He thought that words should act as an incantation and actors should become something akin to shaman summoning life themes that are beyond human.