Although he was originally associated with the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud -- actor, writer, and theatrical theorist -- came to the conclusion that Western theater needed a complete overhaul, and that Surrealism wasn't radical enough to do the job. A Balinese dance... [more]

Although he was originally associated with the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud -- actor, writer, and theatrical theorist -- came to the conclusion that Western theater needed a complete overhaul, and that Surrealism wasn't radical enough to do the job. A Balinese dance performance completely shattered Artaud's conception of life and art, and he determined that Western theater's literary roots subverted the sacred, ritualistic origins that constituted drama's true essence. As a solution, Artaud urged theatrical artists of the West to study Asian theaters. Occidental classics, he decreed, were only masterpieces if they still had a sacred relevance for modern audiences. To Artaud, who considered himself a priest of the theater, scripts were mere stage directions; the audience, not the performance, was the centerpiece of his work. He envisioned theater as a sensory experience, cruel in the way it bombarded and overwhelmed the audience's senses. A visceral, nightmarish drama of word, gesture, and ritual, the Theater of Cruelty would, ideally, force its spectators to expand their customary responses to stage events well beyond their normal frames of reference. Demanding a theater so involving that it changed people at the root of their being, Artaud dismissed Stanislavskian realism as uninspired compared to more ritualized, sacred performances which tapped the unconscious. Artaud claimed his Theater of Cruelty's sensory overload could protect society from its tendencies towards violence and aggression, purging the evil and ugliness in human nature by engaging the audience on the instinctual level and forcefully cleansing it of its own worst impulses. Today, a Theater of Cruelty is attempted by certain multimedia productions that strive to create a total sensory experience through technologies such as virtual reality. [show less]