The THEATRE OF CRUELTY is a form of Theatre originally developed by avant-garde French playwright, essayist and theorist, Henry Becque. Antonin Artaud – originally a member of the Surrealist movement in Paris during the 1930s – around 50 years after the first developments of the Theatre form, is also seen as a main contributor to the genre. His essays in The THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE, were written with the intention of attacking theatrical conventions and the importance of language of drama, opposing the vitality of the viewer’s sensual experience against Theatre as a contrived literary form, and urgency of expression against complacency on the part of the audience. THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY can be seen as a break from conventional Western Theatre and a means by which the artists assault the senses of the audience, and allow them to feel the unexpressed feelings of the subconscious.
Antonin Artaud was well known as an actor, playwright and essayist of avant-garde Theatre. While Artaud eventually broke away from the Surrealist movement, the movement helped to shape his later theories on the THEATRE OF CRUELTY. Led by Andre Breton, co-founder, leader and principal theorist of Surrealism, Surrealist Theatre reflected a belief that the unconscious mind was a source of artistic truth. In his manifesto on Surrealism, Breton writes,
“pure psychic automatism, by which is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought’s dictation, in absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupation.”
In 1926, Artaud founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry, which only produced non-naturalistic drama. The Theatre only lasted 2 years. After his work in Surrealist Theatre, Artaud went on to develop his theories on THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY after he was inspired by a Balinese dance troupe performance that he viewed at the Paris Colonial Exhibit in 1931. The performance conventions of Balinese dance were different to any Artaud had previously experienced, and he was struck by the intense physicality of the dancers. Artaud went on to publish his major work on THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY in his essays THE THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE, several years later in 1937.
In his writings on the Theatre of Cruelty, Artaud points to both “Theatre” and “cruelty” that are separate from their colloquial meanings. For Artaud, Theatre does not merely refer to a staged performance before a passive audience. The Theatre is a practice, which “wakes us up. Nerves and heart,” and through which we experience, “immediate violent action,” that “inspires us with the fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon us like a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten.”
Similarly, cruelty does not refer to an act of emotional or physical violence. According to scholar Nathan Gorelick, “Cruelty is, more profoundly, the unrelenting agitation of a life that has become unnecessary, lazy, or removed from a compelling force. THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY gives expression to everything that is ‘crime, love, war, or madness’ in order to ‘unforgettably root within us the ideas of perpetual conflict, a spasm in which life is continually lacerated, in which everything in creation rises up and asserts itself against our appointed rank.”
Artaud felt that the focus of Theatre in the west had become far too narrow—primarily examining the psychological suffering of individuals or the societal struggles of specific groups of people. He wanted to delve into the aspects of the subconscious that he believed were often the root cause of human being’s mistreatment of one another. Through an assault on the audiences’ senses, Artaud was convinced that a theatrical experience could help people purge destructive feelings and experience the joy that society forces them to repress. For Artaud, “the Theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively.” Insufficiency of language
Artaud believed that the focus of Theatre in the west had become far too narrow – primarily examining the psychological suffering of individuals or the societal struggles of specific groups of people. He wanted to explore the different aspects of the subconscious that he believed were often the root cause of the human being’s mistreatment of one another. Through an assault on the audiences’ senses, Artaud was convinced that a Theatrical experience could help purge people’s destructive feelings and experience the joy that society forces them to repress. For Artaud, “the Theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively.”
Artaud felt that language was an entirely insufficient means to express trauma. Accordingly, he felt that words should be stripped of meaning and chosen for their phonic elements. According to scholar Robert Vork, “speech on THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY’s stage is reduced to inarticulate sounds, cries and gibbering screams, no longer inviting a subject into being but seeking to preclude it’s very existence.” Contradictory of this statement, Artaud claims that his characters are able to express things that others are unable to say. Vork claims, “Artaud seems to be suggesting that his play reveals emotions and experiences that we all attempt to proscribe and are unwilling to acknowledge, but which nevertheless occur.”
Stephen Barber explains that “THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY has often been called an ‘impossible Theatre’—vital for the purity of inspiration which it generated, but hopelessly vague and metaphorical in its concrete detail.” This impossibility has not prevented others from articulating a version of his principles as the basis for explorations of their own.
Personally, in my opinion, even though the aims of THE CRUELTY OF THEATRE are almost impossible to achieve in a performance; use of no language and opening up the minds of the audience to reveal their unconscious feelings and emotions that society represses. Achieving these aspects in a photograph is more simple than in a performance. By using a camera, it can capture the movement and facial expressions of a person that otherwise would not be noticed by an audience perspective because of how fast small hand gestures and transitions of facial expressions happen. A photograph also eliminates speech and language which almost counts as a distraction when analysing someones movement while they interact with other people. An audience would only be able to pick up on these movements that someone performs after long repetitive exposure and analysis. Even then, the subject that performs these movements in a daily routine of interaction and expression, they do not necessarily notice their own movement that has been built up by their personality and subconscious mind. The hand gestures and facial expressions that someone displays when interacting with another person is built and influenced from copying and mirroring movement from people they repetitively spend their time with, as well as their movements being unique to them. A photograph will eliminate distractions of speech and capture someones subconscious movement and preserve it. The only difference between a photograph and THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY is that it doesn’t stimulate any senses other than sight, but it allows the viewer to deconstruct and analyse the meaning.