TOPIC+Absurdism+Artaud

=**Absurdism, Artaud, and YOU!**=

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__**In the Solar System of Absurdism, Artuad is our Sun**__

The Life and Times of ANTONIN ARTAUD: our baby boy of Absurdism (1896-1948)

Antonin was a french intellectual, theatre theorist, actor, and playwright. He lived a fantastically tragic life, spending a substantial portion of it in mental institutions and under the care of doctors and psychiatrists. His relationship with 'madness' began at age four when he had a near fatal bout of meningitis that left him with nervous tics and agitation. His parents sent him to various institutions and he was subjected to different types of treatments for his 'neurosis'. When he was 18, he was prescribed opium by a doctor and struggled with an addiction to this drug for the rest of his life. He was self-committed to an institution in 1918, moving in and out of asylums until 1937, where he spent the next nine years in mental hospitals, such as the Ivy-Sur-Seine where he underwent electroshock thearapies. During those nine years he published many of his works, including his most well-known, //The Theatre and Its Double.// He died of intestinal cancer in 1948 alone in Paris.

His poetry and prose often surround themes of dreams, drugs, and a deep, deep longing to understand himself and his sadness and discomfort with humanity and the theatre. During his lifetime, he was often misunderstood but was the subject of fascination by theorists and other artists. For example, one of his first publications was a series of letters between Artaud and Jacques Riviére, the editor of the literary journal //La Nouvelle Revue Francaise//. The correspondences entail Artaud submitting poetry to the journal and getting rejected by Riviére. Yet the editor was so fascinated by Artaud that he continued to write him, inquiring of his life and passions. The letters between them start off as a polite and professional conversation, and evolve into a deep, profound attempt to understand one another, provoked by Artaud's honest examination of his own condition. His life was short and hard, and his internal struggle to disseminate normative conventions so that humans might better understand each other beyond superficial measures was evident by the change in his body over approximately 50 years:



__**From the Surreal to the Absurd:**__ Antonin was a pioneer of the Surrealist movement and published many influential surrealist works such as //Backgammon of the Sky,// //Umbilical Limbo//, and his play //The Jet of Blood//. He broke from the movement in 1926 when André Breton became a communist. Though Artaud himself never mentioned "absurdism" his work is considered a critical part of the movement, and highly influential to the formation of absurdist theory and art. Martin Esslin coined the term "Theater of the Absurd" and mentions Artaud as an influential source. Especially important to absurdism are Antonin's notions of cruelty and the meaning(lessness) of language.

Especially influential to Artaud's formation of thought and theory was the philosophy of existentialism and the work of Soren Kierkegaard.

__**Théåtre de la Cruauté**__: "We cannot go on prostituting the idea of theater whose only value is in its excruciating, magical relation to reality and danger" -//Theatre of Cruelty, First Manifesto//

Artaud calls for an urgent revolution the the modern theater. He is highly critical of the use of words as language and the movement/use of the body. He calls the reality of the created theatre false and urges for a radical re-thinking of the modern conventions used to create it. Especially important is Artuad's emphasis on the reconsideration of language. The language of the cruel is not always recognizable as words, or even human sounds. It can be gestural, guttural, or silent so long as it is viscerally recognizable to the audience (that is, not necessarily consciously recognizable, but resonant somewhere in the human condition). The point is not to bombard the audience with themes, a lesson, or clichés, but rather to penetrate them with something real. Reality is often a question, and an unanswerable one.

Artaud wanted to bring back the mythos and magic of the theatre through the use of the human rather than through our normal understanding of theatrical conventions.

__**On Cruelty:**__ The cruelty that Artaud writes about in his //First Manifesto// is not that of a sadist or physically violent nature (though often depicted or misunderstood as such). But rather, the cruelty lies in the utter destruction of the modern convention of a false reality. The actors must tear away any mask and show the audience a raw, carnal, baser truth. The actor must experience a cruel emotion that they may not want to, and then through the use of the "language of cruelty" they must translate that emotion into one that affects the audience as much as possible.

__**A Paradox:**__ One of the Artaud's biggest issues lies in the human language used in theatre to convey emotions. He calls for its desctruction, and complete revolution rather than reform (reform being to change something from the inside, revolution being to burn something down and rebuild it). Yet, words words words! //Theatre and its Double// is dense and pretty "intellectual". The meaninglessness of human language in the eyes of the absurd and Artuad is difficult to navigate through the use of written language in all of its limitations and connotations. Yet, even most of his productions which attempt to get around the hurdle of language (//Les Cenci, Jet of Blood//) were failures in his time. The Theatre of Cruelty has even been called the "Impossible Theatre" because of the impossibility of staging something so true and pure without language and vague metaphor.

__**What this Has to do With YOU:**__ The theatre of the absurd came about as a reaction to the world around it. Artaud's call for revolution is an interesting way to look at how we might be able to respond to our world NOW. Can reform happen by recycling current/traditional conventions? Or do we really need to "rip away" our quest for meaning and communication via words? By destroying and rebuilding our conventional theatre will we enable a reworking of world views of the human conditions as a whole? Here is our wiki about absurdist philosophy in action in theatre today. And here you can find an analysis of two absurdist plays, both within the last 100 years.

__**Other Links to Check Out:**__ [|Jet of Blood] A clip from a production of Artaud's play, //Jet of Blood// staged by NY based Built4Collaps. [|The Passion of Joan of Arc] A clip from Artaud in Carl Dreyer's //The Passion of Joan of Arc//. To Have Done With the Judgement of God a translation/transcription of Artaud's radio play that was banned for its "anti-religious" and "anti-American" nature. It was broadcast shortly after his death by a group of artists including Georges Auric and René Char.

__**Bibliography:**__ Artaud, Antonin. //The Theater and Its Double//. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc, 1958. Print. Artaud, Antonin. "Collected Writings." Ed. Susan Sontag. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976. Print.