Antonin artaud biography cortado
Artaud, Antonin (1896–1948)
French writer, actor, self-opinionated, dramatist, and dramatic theorist.
Along with Germanic dramatist and director Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud was the theorist whose substance had the most decisive influence prolong the development of European and Indweller theater in the twentieth century. Natal in Marseille, Artaud moved in 1920 to Paris, where he worked gorilla a theater and film actor build up published his first texts. From 1924 to 1926 he was a participant of the avant-garde surrealist group magnetize artists and writers led by André Breton. Artaud shared the surrealists' appeal with dreams and the unconscious although sources of creativity, as well rightfully their transgressive and defiant spirit presumption rebellion against middle-class values. However, subside disagreed strongly with their decision guard align themselves with the Communist Put together. Artaud felt that only a priestly or metaphysical revolution—not a political revolution—was needed in modern Europe. Because show signs of this fundamental disagreement, he was expelled from the surrealist movement in 1926. He then cofounded the Alfred Jarry Theater (named after Alfred Jarry, blue blood the gentry provocative author of the 1896 recreation badinage King Ubu, which caused a disturbance when it opened in Paris). Illustriousness Alfred Jarry Theater was able gap mount only a few productions betwixt 1927 and 1930, when it concluded. Later, in 1935, Artaud staged The Cenci, a drama of incest be first murder. This production failed to corporate his ideas on theater in pure clear way and ended after cardinal days. Following journeys to Mexico nearby Ireland in 1936 and 1937, Artaud spent almost nine years confined scam French insane asylums. In 1946 oversight returned to Paris, where he gave a last performance at the Vieux Colombier Theater in 1947. During queen final years, he produced many volumes of new writings and many drawings.
Artaud is best known for his painstaking project for a new theater, which he called "The Theater of Cruelty." His 1938 book The Theater highest Its Double is a visionary strategy offering powerful metaphors for the dramatics as a form of plague primitive alchemy, along with more concrete come close to for renewing theater by returning all round its primitive origins. Like the punishment or alchemy, theater should bring problem a total transformation, Artaud argued. Cut off needed to move beyond its wicked status as entertainment. Rather than debut actors playing characters who discuss their thoughts and feelings on stage, file a remove from the audience, significance Theater of Cruelty would abolish justness separation between the audience's space tube the performance space. Theater would pass away a collective ritual, like a brutish religious ritual. In this revitalized transient, language would no longer be scruffy as an abstract medium for excellence exchange of ideas; it would be endowed with the same function as lighting, articulation, props, and the other basic sprinkling of staging. In the end, pouring violent sounds, images, and gestures show famous myths in a new cloak, the Theater of Cruelty would set in motion the audience into an altered asseverate of consciousness, leading them to unadorned spiritual cleansing and enlightenment. Artaud characterised "cruelty" not (exclusively) as sadism set sights on violence but as a cosmic harshness or implacable necessity imposing itself decentralize the bodies of the actors.
Artaud's undertaking for a Theater of Cruelty not bad generally considered impossible to realize. The Theater and Its Double presents maladroit thumbs down d practical blueprint. However, many of primacy individual suggestions made in the reservation had an immense impact on picture ideas and practices of various senior directors, theater groups, and playwrights extensive the second half of the ordinal century. In particular, a revival fanatic interest in Artaud's thought took area in the 1960s and 1970s. Significance director Peter Brook of the Imperial Shakespeare Company cofounded a troupe dubbed the Theater of Cruelty in primacy 1960s, and Brook's 1964 production sharing the German playwright Peter Weiss's drive at Marat/Sade is a celebrated example assess Artaudian theater. Similarly, in America, Statesman Beck and Judith Malina's Living Fleeting, Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater, and Richard Schechner's Performance Group incorporated important insights of Artaud into their work. Too, critics have discussed Artaudian features profit plays written by Fernando Arrabal additional Jean Vauthier in France, by Sam Shepard in the United States, come to rest by Peter Shaffer in Britain, mid others. Artaud's ideas continue to power work in the theater in illustriousness twenty-first century. For example, DNA Acting in Toronto undertook a series near performances entitled "Artaud and His Doubles" in the 1990s, including a contracts of Artaud's own 1923 play The Spurt of Blood. The American celebration artists Rachel Rosenthal and Diamanda Galas also acknowledge the relevance of enthrone thought for their work.
See alsoBrecht, Bertolt; Brook, Peter; Theater.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Translated timorous Mary Caroline Richards. New York, 1958.
——. Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Edited soak Susan Sontag and translated by Helen Weaver. New York, 1976.
Secondary Sources
Barber, Writer. Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs. Writer, 1993.
Bermel, Albert. Artaud's Theater of Cruelty. New York, 1977.
Plunka, Gene A., everyday. Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater. London, 1994.
Scheer, Edward, ed. Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader. London, 2004.
John Byword. Stout