Antonin Artaud

Antonin was born in Marseille, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud. His parents were first cousins: his grandmothers were sisters from Smyrna (modern day İzmir, Turkey). Euphrasie gave birth to nine children, but four were stillborn and two others died in childhood. Biographer David Shafer argues, however, that given the frequency of such misdiagnoses, coupled with the absence of a treatment (and consequent near-minimal survival rate) and the symptoms he had, it's unlikely that Artaud actually contracted it.Artaud attended the Collège Sacré-Coeur, a Catholic middle and high school, from 1907 to 1914. At school he began reading works by Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Edgar Allan Poe and founded a private literary magazine in collaboration with his friends. Towards the end of his tenure at the Collège, Artaud noticeably withdrew from social life and "destroyed most of his written work and gave away his books".:163 In 1916, there was a pause in Artaud's treatment when he was conscripted into the French Army.:26 He was discharged early due to "an unspecified health reason" (Artaud later claimed it was "due to sleepwalking", while his mother ascribed it to his "nervous condition").:4 In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed Artaud laudanum, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates.:162 In March 1921, he moved to Paris where he was put under the psychiatric care of Dr Édouard Toulouse who took him in as a boarder.:29 == Career ==

Theatrical apprenticeships In Paris, Artaud worked with a number of celebrated French "teacher-directors", including Jacques Copeau, André Antoine, Georges Pitoëff, Ludmilla Pitoëff, Charles Dullin, Firmin Gémier and Lugné-Poe.:345 As a member of Dullin's troupe, Artaud trained for 10 to 12 hours a day. He was originally a strong proponent of Dullin's teaching and they shared a strong interest in east Asian theatre, specifically performance traditions from Bali and Japan. This included his performance as Jean-Paul Marat in Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927) and the monk Massieu in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Directed by Germaine Dulac, many critics and scholars consider it to be the first surrealist film, though Artaud's relationship to the resulting film was conflicted. Association with surrealists Artaud was briefly associated with the surrealists, before André Breton expelled him from the movement in 1927. 274 As Ros Murray notes, "Artaud was not into politics at all, writing things like: I shit on Marxism. Additionally, "Breton was becoming very anti-theatre because he saw theatre as being bourgeois and anti-revolutionary." In "The Manifesto for an Abortive Theatre" (1926/27), written for the Theatre Alfred Jarry, Artaud makes a direct attack on the surrealists, whom he calls "bog-paper revolutionaries" that would "make us believe that to produce theatre today is a counter-revolutionary endeavour".:24 He declares they are "bowing down to Communism", They staged four productions between June 1927 and January 1929. The Theatre was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including Arthur Adamov, André Gide, and Paul Valéry. The Cenci (1935) In 1935, Artaud staged an original adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci at the Théâtre des Folies-Wagram in Paris. The drama was Artaud's first and only chance to stage a production following his manifestos for a Theatre of Cruelty. While Shelley's version of The Cenci conveyed the motivations and anguish of the Cenci's daughter Beatrice with her father through monologues, Artaud's adaptation emphasized the play's cruelty and violence, in particular "its themes of incest, revenge and familial murder".The Theatre of Cruelty, he theorized in the text, abandoned the formal proscenium arch and dominance of the playwright, which he considered "a hindrance to the magic of genuine ritual", in favor of "violent physical images", which would "crush and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator", who would be "seized by the theatre as by a whirlwind of higher forces".:6 == Travels and institutionalization ==

Journey to Mexico In 1935, Artaud decided to go to Mexico, where he was convinced there was "a sort of deep movement in favour of a return to civilisation before Cortez".:11 The Mexican Legation in Paris gave him a travel grant, and he left for Mexico in January 1936. After arriving the following month, he "became something of a 'fixture' in the Mexican art scene", though he was often under the influence of opiates, and spent much of his time "seated and immobile, 'cual momia [like a mummy]".:73 Artaud also lived in Norogachi, a Rarámuri village in the Sierra Tarahumara. During this time he stopped using opiates and suffered withdrawal. On his return voyage, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two of the ship's crew members. He retaliated and was put in a straitjacket; upon his return to France he was involuntarily retained by the police and transferred to a psychiatric hospital. At Rodez, Artaud underwent treatments including electroshock and art therapy.:194 The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology charts, and drawing disturbing images were symptoms of mental illness. Artaud denounced the electroshock treatments and consistently pleaded to have them suspended, while also ascribing to them "the benefit of having returned him to his name and to his self mastery". In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine. == Final years ==

At Ivry-sur-Seine Artaud's friends encouraged him to write. He visited a Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Orangerie in Paris and wrote the study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société ["Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society"]; in 1947, the French magazine K published it.:1 Wladimir Porché, the Director of French Radio, shelved the work the day before its scheduled airing on 2 February 1948. Porché refused to broadcast it even though the panel were almost unanimously in favor of Artaud's work being broadcast. Death In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died on 4 March 1948 in a psychiatric clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. He was found by the gardener of the estate seated alone at the foot of his bed holding a shoe, and 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. == Legacy and influence ==

Artaud has had a profound influence on theatre, avant-garde art, literature, psychiatry and other disciplines. • The Theatre of the Absurd, particularly the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett. • Peter Brook's production of Marat/Sade in 1964, which was performed in New York and Paris, as well as London. • The Living Theatre. • In the winter of 1968, Williams College offered a dedicated intersession class in Artaudian theatre, resulting in a week-long "Festival of Cruelty", under the direction of Keith Fowler. The Festival included productions of The Jet of Blood, All Writing is Pig Shit, and several original ritualized performances, one based on the Texas Tower killings and another created as an ensemble catharsis called The Resurrection of Pig Man. • In Canada, playwright Gary Botting created a series of Artaudian "happenings" from The Aeolian Stringer to Zen Rock Festival, and produced a dozen plays with an Artaudian theme, including Prometheus Re-Bound. • Charles Marowitz's play Artaud at Rodez is about the relationship between Artaud and Dr. Ferdière during Artaud's confinement at the psychiatric hospital in Rodez; the play was first performed in 1976 at the Teatro a Trastavere in Rome. Philosophy Artaud also had a significant influence on philosophers. Philosopher Jacques Derrida provided one of the key philosophical treatments of Artaud's work through his concept of "parole soufflée". Feminist scholar Julia Kristeva drew on Artaud for her theorisation of "subject in process". The Latin American dramatic 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. The 2022 novel, Plague Theatre by Ansgar Allen engages Artaud's writings on plague and theatre and his suggestion that plague approaches theatre, and theatre approach the paroxysms of plague. A novel, Traitor Comet, was published in June 2023 as the first in a series on Artaud's life and his friendship with the poet Robert Desnos. The sequel, ''L'Etoile de Mer (The Starfish)'', was published in November 2024, and continues the story of Artaud as he defies André Breton and forms the Theater Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac. Music The band Bauhaus included a song about the playwright, called "Antonin Artaud", on their album Burning from the Inside. Influential Argentine hard rock band Pescado Rabioso recorded an album titled Artaud. Their leader Luis Alberto Spinetta wrote the lyrics partly basing them on Artaud's writings. Venezuelan rock band Zapato 3 included a song named "Antonin Artaud" on their album Ecos punzantes del ayer (1999). Composer John Zorn has written many works inspired by and dedicated to Artaud, including seven CDs: "Astronome", "Moonchild: Songs Without Words", "Six Litanies for Heliogabalus", "The Crucible", "Ipsissimus", "Templars: In Sacred Blood" and "The Last Judgment", a monodrama for voice and orchestra inspired by Artaud's late drawings "La Machine de l'être" (2000), "Le Momo" (1999) for violin and piano, and "Suppots et Suppliciations" (2012) for full orchestra. Film Filmmaker E. Elias Merhige, during an interview by writer Scott Nicolay, cited Artaud as a key influence for the experimental film Begotten. == Filmography ==