The Theater and Its DoubleA collection of manifestos originally published in 1938, The Theater and Its Double is the fullest statement of the ideas of Antonin Artaud. "We cannot go on prostituting the idea of the theater, the only value of which is in its excruciating, magical relation to reality and danger," he wrote. He fought vigorously against an encroaching conventionalism he found anathema to the very concept of theater. He sought to use theater to transcend writing, "to break through the language in order to touch life." |
Contents
4 | |
The Theater and Culture | 5 |
The Theater and the Plague | 13 |
Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene | 31 |
The Alchemical Theater | 46 |
On the Balinese Theater | 51 |
Oriental and Occidental Theater | 66 |
No More Masterpieces | 72 |
The Theater of Cruelty First Manifesto | 87 |
Letters on Cruelty | 99 |
Letters on Language | 103 |
The Theater of Cruelty Second Manifesto | 120 |
An Affective Athleticism | 131 |
Two Notes | 140 |
In Memoriam Antonin Artaud | 145 |
The Theater and Cruelty | 82 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute abstract action actor alchemy anarchy Animal Crackers animated Antonin Artaud appear aspect attitudes Balinese theater beautiful believe body breath Cagliari characters color concrete conflicts consciousness costumes create culture dance domain double drama dreams effect efficacity essential everything exist expression feeling feminine force forms gestures give hieroglyphs human idea images intellectual Jacques Rivière Jean-Louis Barrault kind language of words light living magic manifest Marx Brothers material matter means metaphysical mind mise en scène Montezuma moral movements mysterious nature never objects Occident Occidental theater onomatopoeia organism Oriental theater painting passions performance physical plague play poetic poetry possible precise principles produced profound psychological pure reality reveal rhythm Rodez Roger Blin secret seems sense sensibility signs sonorous sort soul sounds space speak spectacle spectator speech spiritual spoken language stage symbols Tarahumaras Theater of Cruelty theatrical thing thought tion true theater turn vibrations victim