BORN: 04/09/1896 -- Marseille, France
DIED: 04/03/1948 -- Paris, France
OCCUPATION: Theatre director, poet, actor, artist
KNOWN FOR: Theatre of Cruelty
QUOTES: "Those who live, live off the dead" // "No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modelled, built or invented except literally to get out of hell" // "I myself am an absolute abyss" // "Don't tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of your bones" // "If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again"
EARLY LIFE: At the age of four he got spinal meningitis. He was arranged a long series of Sanatorium stays by his parents. This lasted five years, apart from two months when he was in the French army. However, he was discharged from the army due to his sleepwalking. In May 1919, he was prescribed laudanum by the Sanatorium director. He became addicted to this and other opiates.
LATER LIFE: He moved to Paris in 1920 to pursue his writing career and found he had talent for avant-grande ("people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics" - Wikipedia). Whilst in France he developed relationships with directors and editors, and wrote many works. He also developed a love of cinema. In 1936 he travelled to Mexico, recorded his findings and struggled with withdrawal from heroin. He returned to France and later travelled to Ireland, spending his time there in a hotel room he couldn't afford. Before deportation to France he was arrested briefly. On the journey back to France, he was arrested and put in a straitjacket as he believed he was being attacked by two crewmen and retaliated. The final part of his life was spent in different asylums. He was given electroshock treatments. In January 1948 he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. He died a few months later.
Space & Actor-Audience Relationship
- Artaud experimented with the actor-audience relationship
- relationship between the actor and audience in the Theatre of Cruelty was intimate
- preference for actors to perform around the audience in the centre (rectangle/ring/boundary)
- he attempted to reduce or eliminate the special space set aside for the actors (the stage)
- Grotowski refuted Artaud’s concept of eliminating the stage area
- performers placed in four corners / on four sides of the space (revolutionary?)
- Grotowski argued Artaud’s use of space was not revolutionary; it had already been attempted
- the audience was therefore placed in a weaker, less powerful position (encircled by actors)
- the audience was often seated on swivel chairs (easily swinging around to follow the action)
- galleries and catwalks enable the performers to look down on the audience (trapping them)
