Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty

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Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty Antoine Artaud was a French dramatist, theatre director, actor, poet and playwright, born in 1896. In the beginning of his childhood, he was diagnosed with meningitis, which sometimes is considered as the cause of many of his future psychological problems, such as nervous and irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He believed that theatre was much more than words of poetic structures and that oral language couldn’t express all the feelings and sensations that he had. So he wrote numerous essays, poems, letters to back up his theory, leading to the creation of the Theatre of Cruelty. In 1923, after have the publication of some of his poems rejected by the Nouvelle Revue Française editor, Jacques Rivière, Antonin corresponded to him by stating: “Dialogue—something written and spoken—does not specifically belong to the stage but to books…”Artaud believed that words wasn’t enough to express his ideas and that spoken language wasn’t the most important attribute for communication in theatre, diverging with the Western theatres beliefs that theatre depends exclusively on the language for communication. According to Artaud, “…the stage is tangible, physical place that needs to be filled and it ought to speak its own concrete language.” He thought that spoken language was significant for theatre but the stage was touchable, and physical language was essential to fill the stage and achieve the purposes of theatre. Physical language was extremely necessary to reach the senses of communication in certain ways. These senses are: hearing, touch, smell and taste. Through physical language you can easily make sounds to express a feeling, for example, you could clap your hands to show appreciation for something or someone or you could clap your hands in a much desperate way to get someone’s attention. Sounds effects and music

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