Antonin Artaud: a Theatre of Impossible

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Antonin Artaud: A Theatre of Impossible What he bequeathed was not achieved works of art but a singular presence, a poetics, an aesthetics of thought, a theology of culture, and a phenomenology of suffering. (Finter and Griffen, 1997: xx) Antonin Artaud, a highly influential twentieth century theatre practitioner, is studied at A-level throughout the country. Pupils dedicate their summative grades to an understanding and analytical consideration of his theories which to some are inspired and revolutionary yet to others are nebulous and antithetical. Susan Sontag (1988: xxv) highlights in Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings that his ‘…inexhaustible paradox is mirrored in [his] wish to produce art that is at the same time anti-art’. In their article Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre: The Legacy of the Theatre of Cruelty, Helga Finter and Matthew Griffin (1997) recount Artaud’s 1947 performance at the Vieux Colombier where he recited his life story from a manuscript. The performance was cut short at three hours when Artaud was escorted from the stage appearing both lost and confused. While the majority of witnesses described the event as an agonizing presentation of a mental patient, Artaud himself saw the experience as an attempt to ‘explod[e] the boundaries of a theatrical event’ (Ibid). He spoke later of the impossibility of what he was trying to realise and that ‘only bombs could have achieved the desired effect’ (Ibid). It is this very statement that makes placing Artaud’s theories within contemporary practice and teaching them to a new generation so difficult. Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty was in many respects a search of a Theatre of the Impossible. Sontag (1988: lix) states that even Artaud himself was not able to create performance work that was up to the level of his own ideas, continuing to propose that ‘Artaud is only relevant

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