For the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at another practitioner, Artaud, in Miss Starbuck's lessons. Artaud was a French dramatist who worked at around the same time as Brecht. He, however, took a different route to Brecht, and in some ways was somewhat similar to Stanislavski, because he wanted the audience to become emotional when watching a piece, although, Artaud wanted the audience to look into their fears, rather than get lost into the piece that they were watching. Artaud presented the Theatre of Cruelty where he wanted the audience to experience discomfort/confusion about the piece that they were watching. In many of Artaud's pieces, there was no storyline, but rather a theme that ran throughout, which is similar to the political themes presented in Brechtian theatre. His pieces would have minimal dialogue, instead animalistic noises - such as grunts and screams - were used to present the story. He was heavily influenced by surrealism due to a life long addiction to opiates such as heroin. Additionally, he had spells inside mental institutions which also influenced his work.
He was born on the 4th September 1896 and at 5 had suffered a near fatal attack of meningitis, the effects of which remained with him throughout his life such as emotional and neurological problems. In his teens, he suffered from sharp head pains which also continued throughout his life. In 1914, Artaud was a victim of neurasthenia which is an ill defined medical condition that is associated with emotional disturbance, which was prominent throughout Artaud's life. He was treated in a rest home, but the following year was given opiates whereby he became addicted. Despite joining the army in 1916, he was released a year later due to mental instability and the acquired drug addiction.
In 1918 he committed himself to a clinic in Switzerland where he remained until 1920. After this he went immediately to Paris with medical support, where he studied with Charles Dullin, an actor and director. Artaud found jobs as a stage and screen actor as well as set and costume designer for Dullin. One of the first films that he appeared in in 1924 was Surcourt - le roi des corsairs (Overrun - The King of the Corsairs). He became more interested in the surrealism movement headed by André Breton and in 1923 published a volume of symbolic verse inspired by Breton and others. However, he broke away from the movement when Breton converted to Communism and tried to get the rest of the movement to follow him. despite this, Artaud wrote the film script for La Coquille et le clergyman (The Shell and the Clergyman) which is the most famous surrealist film made.
Artaud was also a producer and in 1927 founded the Théatre Alfred Jarvy with two others, although the theatre had no permeant home. As a producer he learned the practical aspect of theatre, with which he was not happy so when he saw a Balinese drama at the French Colonial Exposition in Paris which was the ideal that he had been searching for because it showed a spectacle and dance.
He was also a theoretician and in 1932-1933 wrote the Manifestos of the Theatre of Cruelty which is the basis for much of his style of theatre. The first play that he wrote Les Cenci (The Cenci) was a complete failure and sent him to Mexico in 1930. On his return to Paris, he was engaged and had tried to end his drug addiction. In a lecture in Brussels in 1937 he was completely out of control. Similarly, in Ireland in the autumn of the same year he was declared mentally unfit and send back to France in a straight jacket. During this time, Artaud wrote The Theatre and its Double. After this, Artaud was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent the following nine years in various mental institutions and eventually died of cancer in 1948.
Despite having no success with his endeavors and his reputation being wholly based on his critical work, he still became a strong influence. He said that in theatre, the spectacle should play the main role and made producers more aware of their elaborate sets, movement, and attention to myth.
Visual Poetry - Instead of words, Artaud used stylised movement, gesture, dance, music, and sound effects to communicate with the audience.
Dream World - Combined with visual poetry, Artaud used symbolic props and costumes in order to affect the audience's emotion and subconscious.
Assaulting the Audience - Lights, music, sound, and images were used to shock and confront the audience; this has been made easier in recent years due to the development of technology.
Involving the Audience - The action would take place around the audience which would allow them to be closer and more a part of the action; in some Artaud inspired pieces (and in my GCSE Drama devised piece) actors can go into the audience in order to affect them emotionally.
Deliberate Cruelty - This is an attack on the audience's emotions and senses in a deliberate attempt designed to shock and total involve the audience.
In order for us to understand and get used to the Artaudian style, we were led in a workshop which covered Artaud's main concepts and ideas. I think that this enabled me to get a better grasp on Artaud's style which I feel I wasn't able to grasp at a lower level (GCSE).
Invisible Grid
On the ground was an invisible grid which had lines on it. Using the whole of the space, we walked around it using the lines and when we wanted to change direction we had to turn at a 90 degree angle sharply. We did this for a while at around an average walking pace. Then music was turned on; as the music got louder or quieter, we sped up or slowed down depending on the volume whilst still trying to keep our actions sharp and maintaining concentration. This activity was done to show Artaud's method of having the actor have control over their body and using visual poetry such as stylised movement. I found this quite hard to do, especially as we sped up because my turns became less sharp. This was possibly because I was thinking over the action rather than doing the activity. I also found it hard when coming towards another person because my immediate reaction was to flinch and turn away.
Slow Motion Tennis
I found this activity much easier to do because of the amount of exaggeration that went into it. We 'played' a game of tennis in slow motion using our bodies and facial expressions to show what emotion the tennis player could be feeling. The over use of facial expressions made the activity more comedic (as well as being quite painful on the muscles as I hadn't used them before in that way) which I found quite easy to achieve due to previous 'training' in musical theatre.
Silent Argument
I also found this activity much easier to do. Despite much of the rest of the class talking about what their argument was going to be about, myself and Rachel found it easier to improvise what ours was about. Rather than both of us being mad at the other like what I think most of the class did, we chose that Rachel was the one to be mad at me and I was trying to understand what I had done wrong. In this sense, it was easy to use Stanislavski methods such as the magic 'if' and emotional memory so that we could get into the roles of the characters we had created. I thought that the silence of the scene created more tension between our characters rather than when we added one word for each of our characters to repeat - my word was please and Rachel's word was out. When the words were spoken it released some of the tension within the mini scene and suggested that we were about to come down from the climax of the scene. This again showed control of the body and mind and usage of the body over the mind to portray a scene as we had to over exaggerate our movements and facial expressions.
Fantasy Journey
As a group of four we went on a fantasy journey through a fridge and into the magical land inside of the fridge. We had to over exaggerate our movements and facial expressions again which made the piece both comedic and disturbing due to the context of what we were doing. Additionally, we were told to sacrifice someone to the monster hiding in the fridge which brought again an element discomfort and disgust despite the exaggeration being comedic. Additionally, we created our own soundscape with shouting and some screaming in the activity which allowed for additional Artaudian technique.
Quick Depictions
Staying on the somewhat uncomfortable route, we then personified objects such as a washing machine and sausages on the grill. Most of the objects were screaming which although was comedic had uncomfortable undertones and could make an audience member confront themselves as to how they treat this object. We further enhanced this by creating a mini scene in a factory where we boxed up something along a conveyer belt. This again was quite disturbing yet comedic.
Ritual
By ourselves we were told to reenact something that we do everyday. For me, I chose running from the tram to the bus in the morning and made four distinct sections to my movements. I then joined Izzy where we adopted each others movements and made them into a mini routine/scene with a transition in between them. We then joined Kathryn and Hannah 1 where we adapted each of our routines so that we could fit into each of them. We adapted them by changing some of the moves and by doing this, it made the movements more abstract which is needed in an Artaudian style piece to confuse the audience. I think that we made our routine far too abstract, so much so that in some parts it was hard to see what our additional ideas had been, however, for some parts such as the pressing of each others cheeks, it worked well especially with the background music and the lighting.
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