Theatre of Cruelty

Antonin Artaud was well known as an actor, playwright, and essayist who worked in both theatre and cinema. He was briefly a member of the surrealist movement in Paris from 1924 to 1926, before his "radical independence and his uncontrollable personality, perpetually in revolt, brought about his excommunication by André Breton." Led by André Breton, the surrealist movement argued that the unconscious mind is a source of artistic truth and the artistic works associated with the movement looked to reveal the mind's inner workings. Though only momentarily an official member of the group, he was associated with its members throughout his life time and the movement's theories shaped Artaud's development of the Theatre of Cruelty. He directed all of the productions at the theatre, and explored many of the ideas that he would later articulate in his writings on the Theatre of Cruelty. In 1931, Artaud saw a Balinese dance troupe performance at the Paris Colonial Exhibit. Artaud went on to publish his major work on the Theatre of Cruelty, The Theatre and Its Double, seven years later in 1938. ==Theory==

Encyclopædia Britannica describes the Theatre of Cruelty as "a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself" and points out that Manifeste du théâtre de la cruauté (1932; Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty) and Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theatre and Its Double) both called for "communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world." Defining Artaud's "theatre" and "cruelty" In his writings on the Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud notes that both "theatre" and "cruelty" are separate from their colloquial meanings. For Artaud, theatre does not merely refer to a staged performance before a passive audience. The theatre is a practice, which "wakes us up. Nerves and heart," and through which we experience "immediate violent action" that "inspires us with the fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon us like a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten." Similarly, cruelty does not refer to an act of emotional or physical violence. According to scholar Nathan Gorelick, Cruelty is, more profoundly, the unrelenting agitation of a life that has become unnecessary, lazy, or removed from a compelling force. The Theatre of Cruelty gives expression to everything that is ‘crime, love, war, or madness' in order to ‘unforgettably root within us the ideas of perpetual conflict, a spasm in which life is continually lacerated, in which everything in creation rises up and asserts itself against our appointed rank. Through an assault on the audiences' senses, Artaud was convinced that a theatrical experience could help people purge destructive feelings and experience the joy that society forces them to repress. For Artaud, "the theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively." ==Productions and staging==

Artaud wanted to abolish the stage and auditorium, and to do away with sets and props and masks. He envisioned the performance space as an empty room with the audience seated in the center and the actors performing all around them. The stage effects included overwhelming sounds and bright lights in order to stun the audience's sensibilities and completely immerse them in the theatrical experience. Artaud believed that he could erode an audience's resistance by using these methods, "addressed first of all to the senses rather than to the mind," because, "the public thinks first with all of its senses." The play was neither a commercial or critical success and ran for only 17 performances. Artaud, however, believed that, while he was forced to limit the scope of his vision due to financial constraints, Les Cenci succeeded in exemplifying the tenets of the Theatre of Cruelty. ==Legacy==

According to scholar Pericles Lewis, the influences of the Theatre of Cruelty can most clearly be seen in the works of Jean Genet, a post World War II playwright. His plays featured ritualized murder and systemic oppression in order to show the negative consequences and suffering caused by political subjugation. Marat/Sade uses dramatic devices developed by both Artaud and Brecht to depict class struggle and human suffering in the midst of changing social structures. The German dramatist Heiner Müller argues that we have yet to feel or to appreciate fully Artaud's contribution to theatrical culture; his ideas are, Müller implies, 'untimely': "The emergency is Artaud. He tore literature away from the police, theatre away from medicine. Under the sun of torture, which shines equally on all the continents of this planet, his texts blossom. Read on the ruins of Europe, they will be classics." ==Modern activist application==

In 2011, a group of geography and sociology professors used the Theatre of Cruelty as a conceptual, experience-based technique to explore the agrarian struggle and deforestation in the Amazon Basin. These professors: "…suggest that theater, more generally, provides structure for cruel performance, and that violent land conflict, together with forest destruction, constitutes a predictable tragedy of theatrical events. In other words, violent land conflict in Amazonia, with all its terrible implication for people and environment, can be grasped as a theatrical structure with philosophic and material consequences for mind and body." ==See also==