Theatre of Cruelty 1356669 221419182 2008-06-24T12:27:13Z 24.197.190.47 rvt, w/o YouTube link (make bot happy) ''This article is about the style of drama. For the short story, see: [[Theatre of Cruelty (Discworld)]]'' The '''Theatre of Cruelty''' is a concept in [[Antonin Artaud]]'s book ''[[Theatre and its Double]]''. “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that [[metaphysics]] must be made to re-enter our minds” (Artaud, ''Theatre and its Double''). By [[cruelty]], he meant not [[Sadism and Masochism|sadism]] or causing pain, but rather a violent, physical determination to shatter the false [[reality]] which, he said, lies like a shroud over our [[perception]]s. To put it another way, it's not cruelty in the sense of being violent, but the cruelty it takes for the actor to completely strip away their masks and the cruelty of showing an audience a truth that they don't want to see. 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. Antonin Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all expression is physical expression in space. In the Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud was attempting a few things: he had believed that the world, including the society, and the world of theatre had become an empty shell of itself. In the theatre of cruelty, he was trying partly to revolutionise theatre - figuritively burn it to the ground so that it can start again. On another level he was trying to connect people with something more primal, honest and true within themselves, that has been lost for most people. This has, it is believed, partly stemmed from Artaud's mental instability - he was attempting to purge himself through expression. Stephen Barber explains that "the Theatre of Cruelty has often been called an impossible theatre--vital for the purity of inspiration which it generated, but hopelessly vague and metaphorical in its concrete detail." This impossibility has not prevented others from articulating a version of his principles as the basis for explorations of their own. "Though many of those theatre-artists proclaimed an Artaudian lineage ([[Jerzy Grotowski]], [[Peter Brook]], [[Richard Schechner]] among them)," Susie Tharu argues, "the Artaud they invoke is marked by a commitment as ahistorical and [[Transcendence (philosophy)#Original definition|transcendent]] as their own." There is, she suggests, another 'Artaud' and "the tradition he was midwife to." <ref>See Tharu (1984).</ref> The [[Germany|German]] dramatist [[Heiner Müller]], who along with [[Caryl Churchill]] and [[Pina Bausch]] has been identified as having produced a fusion or critical dialogue between [[Antonin Artaud|Artaudian]] and [[Bertolt Brecht|Brechtian]] performance in their work (which is one characteristic of the [[Postmodern theater|postmodern]] in theatre), argues that we have yet to feel or to appreciate fully Artaud's contribution to theatrical culture; his ideas are, Müller implies, 'untimely' (in [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]'s sense):<ref>For the Brecht-Artaud dialogue in postmodern theatre, see Wright (1989), Price (1990), and Howe Kritzer (1991).</ref> <blockquote> "ARTAUD THE LANGUAGE OF CRUELTY Writing from the experience that [[Masterpiece|masterpieces]] are accomplices of power. Thought at the end of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], which began with the [[God is dead|death of God]]; the Enlightenment is the coffin in which he is buried, rotting with the corpse. Life is locked up in this coffin. THOUGHT IS AMONG THE GREATEST PLEASURES OF THE HUMAN RACE [[Bertolt Brecht|Brecht]] has [[Life of Galileo|Galilei]] say, before he is shown the instruments. The lightning that split Artaud's consciousness was [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]'s experience, it could be the last. The emergency is Artaud. He tore literature away from the police, theater 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."<ref>Müller (1977), p. 175.</ref> </blockquote> ==Tributes== * [[Fantasy]] [[author]] [[Terry Pratchett]] wrote a [[short story]] named after this concept as part of his ''[[Discworld]]'' series &ndash; see [[Theatre of Cruelty (Discworld)]]. * In 2003 the [[Cinémathèque Française]] featured a program called "The Cinema of Cruelty" which featured films, such as [[Roger Avary]]'s "[[Killing Zoe]]," that followed Antonin Artaud's mandates for the Theatre of Cruelty. * Theatre of the Now, [[Manchester]]'s foremost purveyors of "[[Performance art]],"/[[experimental theatre]] (PA/EXT) have been cited as encapsualting many of [[Antonin Artaud]]'s ideas in their live preformances and in their many [[film]]s on [[You Tube]] such as "Solitarium". * "Grusomhetens teater" is an [[underground theatre]] situated in [[Oslo]], the capital of [[Norway]]. This theatre is explicitly based on the work and practice of [[Artaud]], and the very name "Grusomhetens teater" is the Norwegian translation of "Theatre of cruelty". This theatre is led by Lars Øyno, a highly renowned director outside of the institutionalized theatres in Norway. "Grusomhetens teater" is connected to, amongst others, [[Odin teater]] in [[Denmark]] and [[Bread and Puppet Theater]]. ==See also== * [[Theatre of the Absurd]] * [[Agitainment]] ==References== * Barber, Stephen. 1993. ''Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs''. London: Faber. ISBN 0571172520. * Howe Kritzer, Amelia. 1991. ''The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Theatre of Empowerment''. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0333522486. * Jamieson, Lee. 2007. ''Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice'' London: Greenwich Exchange. ISBN 9781871551983. * Müller, Heiner. 1977. "Artaud The Language of Cruelty." In ''Germania''. Trans. Bernard Schütze and Caroline Schütze. Ed. [[Sylvère Lotringer]]. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e), 1990. ISBN 0936756632. p.175. * Price, David W. 1990. "The Politics of the Body: Pina Bausch’s ''Tanztheater''". ''Theatre Journal'' 42.3 (Oct). 322-331. * Tharu, Susie J. 1984. ''The Sense of Performance: Post-Artaud Theatre''. New Delhi : Arnold-Heinemann. ISBN 0391030507. ==Footnotes== {{reflist}} {{theat-stub}} [[Category:Theatrical genres]] [[Category:Modernist drama, theatre and performance]] [[Category:Surrealist techniques]] [[fr:Théâtre de la cruauté]]