A Short Piece on Antonin Artaud

In many ways the life of Antonin Artaud could be seen as a modernist work of art, full of contradictions. Whilst he was plagued throughout his life by headaches, madness and a laudanum addiction, he produced eloquent and clear writings; whilst he was a prolific writer, he recognised the inherent impotence of words, in theatre at least. Artaud was also alienated for much of his life, both personally due to his illnesses and professionally due to his radical ideas. Any relationships he had were intense and brief.

His idea of theatre was essentially an exploration of the most basic human drives and the sub-conscious mind. Influenced by Dada and Surrealism, he sought to destroy the established structures of both theatre and society in light of what he saw as a failure to cure the plague of humanity, or possibly to cause it. The idea of the plague as Artaud referred to it is a plague of the mind. He felt that theatre had a tremendous power that was wasted in traditional naturalistic theatre and the Comedie Francaise, a power to release the repressed subconscious in both the actor and spectator thorugh a breakdown of the super-ego. He wanted to absolutely destroy the repressive structures of bourgeouis theatre, to resolve everything to it's purest form in order to purify it and create new meanings.

The relationship between actor and spectator also took a new slant in Artaud's theories; no longer would there be a fourth wall for the audience to peer through as if voyeurs, instead the audience would be at the very centre of the action, immersed in the show. The role of the actor in this show was to be non-representative, in other words they should embody concepts of humanity and elements of dreams and myths rather than an individual character. They would be more akin to dancers in this respect, human heiroglyphs communicating with an esoteric signs system, with absolute discipline and clarity of movement similar to the Balinese dancers and Japanese Noh theatre. There would be no dependence on script in Artaud's theatre, instead every theatrical device available would be utilised; lighting, live and recorded sound, props, puppets, setting and a language of symbols, all a part of what he called the "concrete language of the stage".

Artaud thought that spaces such as disused aircraft hangars, churches or empty barns would be more appropriate spaces for the staging of his shows, places where the sheer scale could be utilised to force the spectator and presumably the actor into a numinous experience. Performances were to be largely unrehearsed, as excessive rehearsal would diminish the sense of immediacy which makes theatre what it is. Artaud's ideas were ahead of his time and are ahead of this time, in the sense that his ideas are not fully executable. The technologies needed to replicate the theatrical devices explained in his texts are still in their infancy. This is why film, although more than adequately equipped to portray Artaud's ideas, is an unsuitable medium due to it's lack of transience and feeling of being "in the moment" that only true theatre possesses. Like the Dadaists, he wanted to destroy the existing order of the mind, not preserve it.