Antonin Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty

On Tuesday the 7th of January, we participated in a devising session exploring the theatre practitioner Antonin Artaud and how his style of theatre could help to capture the conditions within the trenches during WW1 in our piece.

Born in Marseille, France, on September 4, 1896, Antonin Artaud worked as an actor onstage and in film with works like La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) . He was involved in the surrealist movement as a writer and came up with the idea known as "The Theatre of Cruelty," which argued that drama must abandon its emphasis on text and rely on more mysterious, primal expressions of sound, movement and light. 

The idea of Theatre of Cruelty was first introduced by Artaud to describe a pure form of theatre that he hoped would help both the audiences and performers to reveal unconscious primitive responses that were normally inaccessible in theatre productions at the time. Artaud was opposed to theatrical productions based on classical texts and established literacy and thought they only represented worlds that were not relevant to the audiences or performers.

Artaud wanted to evoke a non-passive response to his work and wanted audiences to not escape whilst watching a play but realise their worst nightmares and deepest fears, through various forms. We explored this theory further in class by using sensory theatre and immersing our audience in the middle of the action, this created a sense of confinement for the audience that depicted the dark and treacherous conditions of being trapped in the trenches in WW1. 

Artaud provoked conditions that would unleash primitive instincts that he believed were hidden beneth the civilised behaviours displayed in society at the time. 

Artaud used strong and often dark imagery within his work as he wanted the audience to reject rational interpretation and enjoyed the audiences irrational impulses, Artaud argued that every piece and theory of theatre should be used to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation within the audience.However, Artaud argued that his concept of cruelty was not sadistic.

Within our work, we have used Artauds theory of "Theatre of Cruelty" to create a sound scape within the action, reflecting the conditions within the trenches during WW1.

To create this atmosphere we set our audience out in rows with a gap between the chairs to provide the audience with a sense of isolation within the room and to provide a trench for our performers to utilise. We started to devise this by closing our eyes and imagining the conditions depicted within the diary extract below, most of us felt some connection or response to the text and we discussed this as a class. 

German Western Front - 1915.

We then each chose a sound which we felt would be heard in the trenches and we gradually built up a sound scape, as this was happening we slowly dimmed the lights until the room was near pitch black and we had to make our way around the room by utilising the chairs to provide pathways to simulate the idea of a trench, as we were acting this out we had to imagine that a part of our body was becoming infected from a wound. By using a specific injury we could focus on this physically visualising the smell and infection caused within this wound, we then vocalised this without using dialogue, instead we had to use non-verbal communication to evoke the pain caused by injury without the use of dialogue. 

Solider immersed in cold, muddy water in the trenches. 

As this was happening the character of Dorothy was sat amongst the trenches writing in the diary and was watching the action whilst the character of her granddaughter was reading the diary out at the front of the stage. The actors within the trenches were enacting getting wounded and gassed during a mustard gas attack from the enemy, then all went quiet as these soldiers died from the wounds. Dorothy then had to react to what she had seen. 

Artaud was an interesting theatre practitioner to explore because as a class we all had different reactions to his style of theatre, some of us were able to feel the response that Artaud wanted to evoke whilst others found it harder to feel. However as a class we were all very pleased by the session and felt this scene would be a great one to display and workshop with the students as it explores the principles and theories of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. 

 Real WW1 Diary Extracts

As part of our stimuli we have used extracts from real WW1 diaries but editing them to include our main character Dorothy and her thoughts and feelings.

"In writing this diary I am only putting the main things in that happen daily. Such things as parades are unnecessary because they would not interest anybody who is likely to read this diary. When I say we I mean just five of my section who have been together for a few months now.

It is Saturday Dec 4th 1915. We started to march to trenches 4.10, dusk, shells bursting, someone says, boys it is Saturday night Boys they say I'm not used to being referred to as a man. there are men coming out of trenches up to their thighs in mud. We reached trenches at 5.30pm with bullets & shrapnel  bursting over our heads, we slept in Dug Out, lying with legs over one another & hundreds of rats as big as rabbits crawling all over us biting holes in Haversacks for our rations. Sunday morning 8.30am men expose themselves & shell bursts within two yards of us boys hitting man in the stomach. This is the real face of the war this is what I came out to report.  "I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money can accomplish."


(http://www.birminghampals.co.uk/soldiers/william-bernard-whitmore/on-the-somme-1916/) - Diary Link.


- Abbie