Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud

He is a practitioner who is known for his methods in the Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud is known to be a theatrical director and a playwright. There is a famous book by Artaud called 'Theatre and it's double.' He was born in Marseille in 1896. At the age of four, he had been diagnosed with meningitis that had ultimately affected his emotions while growing up. Artaud also had neuralgia, which had given him depression throughout his years growing up. In the year of 1920, Artaud had wanted to go and become a writer yet had a sudden change-in-mind and went towards avant-garde theatrical works.

Artaud had a general interest in humans and their idealisations on what art made from truth is. He had an interest in masks of morality. This was Artaud's more spiritual aspect on what masks were, but he had believed in using huge irregular objects to be used as masks as well, and to use verbal stimuli to invoke an idea into the audience's minds. Artaud’s vision on masks, identifies one part of the different factors that make up what is the  “Theatre of Cruelty.” These types of theatrical plays focus on the ideas of surrealism. Artaud had a broad vision on the theoretical perspective on of the ways of knowing, perceptions of people.

Going back to the point of Artaud and his vision on truth, his visions on what truth really is, and the only way to see truth is to see beyond the mask of lies that are always suffocating us. This is what the “Theatre of Cruelty” tries to break, so that people can see past all the lies that are constantly being thrown at us, blinding us. Artaud’s theory on breaking this blindness, was to use cruelty. This, doesn't necessarily mean that violence is, in this context, the answer. His theory was that cruelty was in fact needed in theatre, as he says “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible.” I personally believe that Artaud is saying that, there really isn’t a perfect, happy place, even in the imaginative world of theatre. By showing people about how cruel the ‘fake’ theatrical world even has it’s problems. Nobody’s really safe from the harshness of the world, so why bother running? And maybe this was Artaud’s reason for using huge masks, to show the audience that the proportion of the mask size compared to our actual faces are huge. These masks being the lies that we are burdened to wear that we cannot see are right in front of our faces, and we can’t see them. The reason for the masks being made up of irregular things is to point towards the theory that all the things that have surrounded our minds are all different.