Artaud

Antonin Artaud September 4, 1896 - March 4, 1948

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.

A French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theatre director, widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde. 

Being the son of a wealthy ship-fitter with a mother from a Greek background Artaud was educated at the Coll'e du Sacré Coeur in Marseilles. At age five he suffered a near-fatal attack of meningitis, the results of which remained with him for the rest of his life. I think this must've shaped his views on God and the harsh realities of human value and illness at a very young age.  He was very determined from this and at 14 he founded a literary magazine which he kept going for almost four years.

Still in his teens, he began to have sharp head pains, which continued throughout his life. This signifies a lot as to what he had to deal with on a daily basis that could've pushed him in the direction of developing the right mindset for creating the Theatre of Cruelty. In 1914 he was the victim of an attack of neurasthenia and was treated in a rest home; the following year he was given opium to alleviate his pain, and he became addicted within a few months. 

He was inducted into the army in 1916, but was released in less than a year on grounds of both mental instability and drug addiction. In 1918 he committed himself to a clinic in Switzerland, where he remained until 1920. On his release, he went immediately to Paris and became a successful professional actor on screen and on stage all through the twenties. He also became very interested in surrealist movement headed by André Breton and in 1923. published a volume of symbolist verse; a collection of letters, poems in prose, and bits of dialogue; it contained one complete work, the five-minute playlet Le Jet de sang (The Jet of Blood), which was finally produced in 1964.

Artaud used exhaustion to break down barriers in actors, much like Grotowski was inspired to. The Theatre of Cruelty heightened emotions and feasted on the vulnerable senses of the audience. He believed that through this he could create revelations in the audience and speak to them on a deeper level. Cruelty means strictness, diligence, unrelenting decisiveness, irreversible and absolute determination. He was mentally ill and because of that he had a cynical pessimistic view of society. He believes we are all the same within and that's the part of the individual in the audience he wanted to break down. In truth he thought the individual was just an illusion. He believes that given a situation where the normal rules of society are overturned eg. A plague, war, etc. we all can do extraordinary things. In an anarchic situation we all would be the same and savages at that.
Therefore in Artaud's theatre man must be put in an extreme situation because only when in an extreme will the inner man be exposed.
He became deeply influenced by the horrible fascist world that he lived in which is where some of his phylosophy stems from. Influenced by the horrors of the first world war where people saw what horrors man could do. Artaud's theatre is about revealing what man can do. Theatre for Artaud was a tool for exposing and realising society's ills. He referred to these ills as a poison, and wanted to bring out the poison so that when actual extreme situations came to be (eg. War, plague) people would not become the savage beneath. Having the opportunity there would be inevitable, it's about whether or not you actually do a bad thing. He saw theatre of cruelty as a way of containing this savage by horrifying people with it.

He wrote lots of manifestos including the one on theatre of cruelty and wanting to move beyond language in theatre through movement, dance and sounds to move beyond naturalism.
Total theatre- the means by which the heightened stage can be achieved. Using everything at out disposal to create an impact. This was done because helieved the modern man has an innate capacity to reason themselves out of an experience instead of experiencing it. He wanted to bombard his audience with as much sensory media as possible to force the mind into submission. This then softens up the brain and the audience's inner self.
Artaud practices the art of shocking the audience. He believed deeply in his Theatre of cruelty. Strict diligence, unrelenting decisiveness, irreversible and absolute determination. His theory was that Man Is a savage.  Defining extremes. He was mentally ill so he had a pessimistic view on life which made him believe that below the surface we are all the same. Given a situation where the normal rules of society are overturned we'll all do extraordinary things. He believes that as mankind when law and order doesn't exist in an anarchic situation, we will murder and pillage because man is a savage. But only when pushed to the extreme, will the inner man be exposed. 

Theatre was a tool for Artaud to expose society's ills. We need to release and expose it through theatre of cruelty to be able to contain our darker side. 

Artaud was influenced by Balinese performances which is where his manifestos sprung from. 

Total theatre refers to how the heightened state can be achieved. Total theatre bombards the mind into submission through heightened sensory experience. We don't fully commit to moments placing logical barriers into our theatrical experience and Artaud was aware that this would hinge his theatre trying to achieve it's purpose.

Artaud in practice

During the devising of  our performance we tried to adapt this thinking process and break down barriers within us as actors. We did exercises like spreading emotions in a circle to immerse ourselves in them and let them go on to a different level... Spreading joy turned out to be easier as we we let it happen and then ended up in circle of mad laughter bouncing off each other. But the sadness that was passed around in the same circle started out being rejected and faked as people don't like embracing their pain as much as hiding being humor. We did other imagination exercise which i think helped strengthen our pieces later as we were fully committed to the emotions in our exaggerated looped movements and group insanity.
The exercises involved group imaginations of being in a spiderweb or drinking from a chocolate fountain. The point was not to mime a fountain and make it look like realistic but to just feel the emotions intensely and commit to them. One was where we had chairs in a line and we had to go underneath them behind each other but feel like we were being trapped 1000 metres beneath the earth's surface in a tunnel. Like Poor Theatre we had no conventions just working with ourselves as the actor and focusing on us creating the set by being in it mentally. We explored descending ceilings and sinking gobs which was very interesting and developed our senses as actors. In our piece we have soundscapes to create a story and emotion. We could only make that successful buy doing these exercises using not just our bodies and naturalistic voices but sounds.
As we're exploring mental health we made soundscapes from everyone's take on what if feels and looks like. We ended up creating one that set a sense of madness in the room with lots of different cries of help, hysterics, irrational actions etc... We could only show them this once we understood ourselves what it means and looks like to us. It might have stared as us forcing these emotions and sounded unrealistic but allowed us to explore the conventional aspects of mental illness and apply it to our final pieces where we showed the audience perceptions and realities of mental heath.
This was all part of Le Jeu ensemble work where we do collective activities with no leader in a group and anyone can change the drift. This is also something that enabled us to create work through playing like children without barriers. There are boundaries within us as actors which we were attempting to break down like Artaud did with his actors. Even though it can get out of hand or seem like it's not leading us anywhere at first, I think we managed to use the exercise to creates a good sense of ensemble. Also afterwards when we were devising the mental health bit in our piece, this extended the efficiency of what we were able to produce.