Lighting + Sound
– Have finally been able to start rigging the lights. I did not realise how hard it is to organise all the lights, especially when trying to do it on your own. Also, it had been a while since I had organised the lights and so I did my own little refresher course to remind myself. Luckily I was able to find the manual to the lighting board and read through that a few times. And just as I thought I was set, I slide up the yellow buttons and…nothing. After running around for quite a while I realised that quite simply I had forgotten to turn on the dimmer rack. So, after this little mishap, I was set and had a look at what the previous group had used. Unfortunately there were only a few lights that I liked…On the other hand this meant that I had to rig my own lights and gave me the opportunity to learn more about lighting in theatre.
– As Artaud saw the importance in stage craft – especially lighting and sound – I had decided that I wanted the stage to be rather dark, thus emphasising the dark atmosphere of the play. He also wanted it to be like a dream, due to this I decided to have many dark places on the stage. I did not want the stage to be fully lit, allowing the audience to see each other and remember that they are watching a school play. In the book about his theatre, it is mentioned that Artaud’s plays work on the senses and nerves rather than intellect – the darkness of the stage should draw them into the action…
– My favourite scene with regards to lighting is the banquet scene. During the manic bits of this scene I had decided that I wanted to have crazy, flashing lights so that the crazy looked crazier. This scene is when the guests at the banquet are so scared of Cenci that they try to run away. Artaud stipulated that light and sound should often replace the actors on stage. Drawing off this idea, I decided to have flashing coloured lights and disjointed sounds not only to disconcert the audience, but also to replace any dialogue and emphasise their movements.
So I had a talk to one the teachers at school and found out that we actually have a strobe light available. Initially I had planned to use LED lights as they have flashing and strobe settings. However, I soon realised how complex these lights are. First of all, they all have to be daisy chained together, and this cord plugged into the dimmer rack while the normal cord is plugged into the wall. Then, you have to decide what setting you want it to be on and depending on the setting they can take up to 6 channels on the lighting board to control!! I was willing to take the challenge until it was revealed to me that it would take at least 2 hours just to set up these 4 LED lights and I could easily use a strobe instead. So, I set up the strobe and also rigged some parcans with different coloured gels to set up in a chase so that they can flash on and off during the crazy scene.
– I have also realised how difficult it is achieved the same intensity of light across the whole stage. Due to the nature of the play, the stage will never be fully lit, only the places where actors are will be lit. As I have mentioned above, this will increase the dream-like state and dark nature of the play.
– Never thought I would say this, but I am so sick of lighting. It is so frustrating to try and get all the lights in the right position and trying to fit all the lights into the dimmer rack!! A teacher gave me a tip today — I should try and think at the channels as parts of the stage rather than scenes…hopefully this will make it simpler. I hope I haven’t tried to be too ambitious. One of the main things that drew me to Artaud was the importance he placed on lighting and sound – but it is so hard to try and achieve what I had envisioned. — Especially as I mostly have to do it by myself – it is so time consuming to climb up the ladder, adjust the light a tiny bit then climb down and climb up to the lighting desk, try the light and find that its still not quite right and have to repeat the process again!!
– I am still struggling to have the light even all across the stage – I have no idea how others can do it so fast!!
– FINISHED THE LIGHTING!! – pretty much. After my little spaz the other day I decided to come back with fresh eyes, at a quiet moment when there weren’t many around. Rather than going up and down the ladder between the dimmer rack and the lighting board, I used the power plugs next to the dimmer rack to suss out which lights lit what… I took out all the plugs and slowly went through each light, deciding whether I needed it or not….
– Also, as per the advice of a school teacher I saw each channel as a section of stage rather than scenes — this meant that it was clearer in both my head and on the dimmer rack.
– Had our first dress rehearsal last night and tried out the lights for the first time. It really showed me that I should have had someone to walk through the lights when I was putting them up – also, I should have perhaps designed the lights before we blocked out of the scene. When the actors found their space on stage and bit more restricted they became quite uncomfortable on stage so I have to adjust the lights to create more space – especially for the first scene with Cenci and Camillo — I had planned to have them restricted to a small part of the stage but the girl I am working with wanted them to use the whole of the front f the stage, luckily it wasn’t hard at all the adjust this to make it larger. I had also placed a light to shine across the majority of the stage. I had decided to light them from the back to create an eery, dark atmosphere, however, the part of the cast that was watching the scene felt that the actors were too hidden – after a reflection on what I had wanted to achieve and how it had turned out, I decided to move the light to light them from the front…
Run Down Of Each Scene
Scene 1: Cenci and Camillo — Stage left, at the front of the stage will be lit with a soft yellow light. I did not want to light the rest of stage as I did not want the other stage levels to be revealed yet and also because I wanted to audience to get the sense that they are having a secret discussion and are isolated.
Scene 2: Banquet Scene – When guests enter, coloured lights will be flashing with music playing – I want this to make the audience feel as though there are more people on stage than we actually have (Artaud believed that lights and sounds should replace actors), it will also create the busy, drunken atmosphere… When Cenci begins to speak the lights and music will stop – each group of actors will be lit individual across the stage – again, the whole stage will not be lit as to not expose the audience. Appia (lighting director off which Artaud drew many ideas) felt that shade was as important as light in linking the actor to the scene (http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Adolphe_Appia.aspx ) — I recently had a run through with the actors and decided that having just the coloured lights for the part before the guests become scared and then when they are running around, trying to escape to have no other lights than the strobe. This means that the audience cannot properly see the actors and their movement looks incredibly disjointed…
Set Design
May 25th
– Today we were finally able to work with the set as the other class have finished their production. The set that they had used was all black and had many levels. I thought of this a lot when designing my set and actually decided to just expand on their set. This saved a lot of time (both ours and that of the maintenance guys). Also, the set already had the cold mechanical look I was wanting.
– So, I had a look and tried to explain to the guys what I wanted to change. Most of the changes took place stage left – on the highest part of the stage. I wanted to extend the platform backwards to make room for the cross to stand on and for Beatrice to stand in front of the cross – I also wanted to have Beatrice’s feet out of sight of the audience to maintain the effect that she is attached to the cross. To achieve this we put a rostrum on 800mm legs and slid it under the pre-existing stage – half staying under and half extending out the back. Into this we screwed a metal foot for the cross to stand on. – would just like to make a note of how hard the maintenance guys work as everything is extremely heavy and difficult to manoeuvrer! – We also had to make the hole in the bottom of the cross larger in order for it to fit onto the metal foot.
– I learnt the importance of taking accurate measurements. Once we had constructed the rostrum we went to slide it under the pre-existing set and found that it was in fact a little bit wider than expected. To work around this we had to take out one of the legs of the pre-existing stage, thus disrupting the entire structure, and slide it in fully and then put the leg back in. This was not a huge problem but in the future I will be more accurate with measurements.
– I have not yet made the curtain that will hang in front of the stage and from this experience I realise that I have to be accurate otherwise things may not work. Also, I should have planned it better rather than having many unorganised ideas in my head. I realised once we had put the cross up that I also wanted to have the curtain creating the shadows and I had planned to have them both in the same place without realising. To fix this I will have to add another lighting pole to connect the sheet to and then tie it only with a loose note that can be easily undone during a scene change.
– just a note for the set design — have discovered that the big height of the cross can represent the imposing nature of the church — something that i had initially wanted to achieve through multiple religious symbols…
Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty – Albert Bermel
P11 His concept of theatre becomes fully comprehensible only after the deep impression made upon him by Surrealism is understood
P12 He had a hatred for limitations, especially conventional ones
P14 “Masterpieces of the past are good for the past: they are not good for us”
– This influenced our decision to recontextualise the play
P14 The kind of theatre Artaud envisiaged would use the classics but only after subjecting them to a radical overhaul. Lighting, sound equipment, and other techinca means would no longer subverse the text; they would partially replace it. The noises, music, and colours that generally accompany the lines would in places substitute for them. They would be fortified by a range of human noises – screams, grunts, moans, sighs, yelps – together with a repertoire of gestures, signs, and other movements.
P15 He wanted …to expose his audiences to a range of their own feelings that was unconscious and therefore normally inaccessible to them
P15 for Artaud the average performance has too much argument in it and too little – if any – experience.
P22 he did appear to intend that a punishment of a sort be visited on spectators…Instead of shielding spectators from their impact he would expose them, put them through the experience of a danger and then free them from it.
P23 Theatre should provide…plenty of “immediate and violent action”, so that it was not outplayed by the violence and immediacy of life itself
P23 There are thus three outstanding features of the Theatre of Cruelty as Artaud projects it in theory. First, it does not involve physical or spiritual maltreatment; rather, it artistically expresses what he calls in different places the rigor or necessity or implacability of life. Second, the theatre draws on the individual dreams and the collective dreams, or the myths, of all men. It will furnish each spectator with “the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsession, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out, on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior”. Third, because it works on the nerves and senses, rather than on the intellect, and because it impinges on anxieties common to all men, the Theatre of Cruelty is aimed at a general public, not the usual run of theatregoers only.
Whether they realize it or not, the poetic state of feeling such a theatre arouses is “a transcendent experience of life” for everybody, life lived more passionately for the duration of a performance…
P30 His apparent contempt for the meaningful spoken word, and his extravagant ambitions for nonverbal theatre – lighting, sounds, music, masks, makeup, and gesture – in an unorthodox playing space, belong to his effort to find or manufacture a vocabulary of living images that will be intrinsically theatrical; it cannot be put out on loan to such pure literature as poetry or fiction. This new vocabulary of Cruelty communicates by means akin to physical sensation, theatrical “suffering” or “pain”. It will allow theatre of mime cosmic and supernatural forces, and to relate man to the entire universe, and to his own history.
P49 Much as Artaud’s plays, as staging devices, share the Epic and Surrealism a discontinuous structure that reveals stories by indirect means, so they share another characteristic with the plays grouped under the rubric of Symbolism
P50 A drama of moods, when interpreted skilfully, should transmit to the spectators, ineffable emotions of joy, fear, and sorrow that can grow to states of intoxication at not being quite in control of oneself: ecstasy, tremulousness and profound sadness. Such feelings correspond to what Artaud sought to arouse in his audiences: a performance should take them “out of themselves” while it works its magic on them, and then return them to reality still not entirely released from the spell.
P71 As in all his plays Artaud would have required a large stage sufficiently equipped to allow for simultaneous playing of several scene: the massed bodies, fighting and riots, mirrors in the corners of the stage to give the illusion of glittering treasure, and the simple moments of individual figure isolated in their indecision…
Old Lighting Info To Use For IP
LIGHTING – Stagecraft: The complete guide to theatrical practise
– The lighting designer’s job is to illuminate what the others (director, set and costume designers and make-up artists) decide on.
– The eye is always attracted to the brightest object on stage. A spotlight moving across the stage attracts attention to anything that it illuminates.
– If a stage is flooded evenly with light, the audience will first see the stage as a whole and then be attracted to those areas on stage where the light is most intense.
– Intensity: determined by the power of the lights used, the quantity and distribution of lights, the angle at which the beams strikes the object or person, the colour of the light and the reflective quality of the objects being illuminated.
– A set in pale colour will reflect well. Lights of too high intensity will produce a glare. Detail will be lost on costume and in set and the audience will find it hard to see the actors’ faces.
– Important to remember that lights spreads three dimensionally.
– Actor should be more brightly lit than the set.
– Angle: second important concept in lighting. A 45° angle is a good, basic angle that avoids casting unnecessarily long shadows from the actor to the set and low enough to illuminate an actor’s face satisfactorily. If two lights are positioned at 45° angles, 90° apart, the face of the actor is lit completely and movement is allowed for within the limits of the beams.
LIGHTING EQUIPMENT
Beam lights: gives a very narrow and intense beam of light, used to give a strong shaft of light
Floods: provide general lighting such as soft lights from above or used to light cycloramas or backdrops, in general give a wide beam which it hard to control
Fresnel spots: relatively versatile, softer light than profile spot, have shutters called barn doors making it easy to control beam, most common sizes are 250 watt and 500 watt, more professional theatres would use 2000 and 5000 watts
Profile spots: sharp beam of light which can be shaped using shutters or special types of masking, called irises and gobos, intensity depends on the width of the beam; the narrower the beam, the brighter the light
Control systems: the main requirements are dimmer packs and a preset desk. Each channel from the dimmer pack is linked to the preset desk which can be operated independently. Each channel has a maximum wattage load. A patch board is a simple way of altering the lights on each channel of the control system during the performance.
Costume List
Costume List
Beatrice (Clare) – white dress/skirt and top, white heels
Cenci (Jack) – red shirt and pants, black shoes if red not possible
Camillo (Harry) – grey pants, back shirt, white collar (priest collar), black shoes if grey not possible
Andrea (George) – Black shirt, black pants, black shoes
Orsino (Udi) – Black shirt, black pants, black shoes
Lucretia (Meg) – Black top, black pants and black shoes (preferably ballet flats) with white accessory
Princess Colonna (Shahna) – Black top, black pants and black shoes (preferably ballet flats)
Bernado (Morris) – Black shirt, black pants, black shoes
Lady’s Maid (Soph B) – Black top, black pants and black shoes (preferably ballet flats)
Giacomo (Taylen) – Black shirt, black pants, black shoes
Two Assassins (Kate and Laura) – Black t-shirt, black pants, black shoes
Guests (Sophie L and Dana) – Black top, black pants and black shoes (preferably ballet flats)
Guards (Sophie L and Dana) – Black top, black pants and black shoes (preferably ballet flats) with black hats
Workshop 1
What we had noticed the most is that it was very hard to convey to our actors the movement we wanted and the importance of movement in theatre of cruelty. To make it a bit easier we gave a workshop on Laban and his 8 effort actions. First we described each to our actors. We then got them to walk around the room normally and when we called out certain actions they would walk while incorporating these actions into their movement. This was actually hilarious, people’s confidence and funny sides definitely came out in this exercise. It was also interesting to see which movements were found most difficult — wring was one of the main ones. People couldnt figure out how to move this way, especially one of our actors. We had to demonstrate how we would use ‘wring’ in movement. While this helped the actors, it also influenced their perception of the action rather than creating their own.
We then talked about the emotions that are conveyed by each movement and which of the actions would suit their characters. They gave us their ideas and then we tried to integrate our ideas with theirs – by doing this, hopefully their understanding of their characters would be more thorough.
We also showed them a video of a theatre of cruelty piece performed by our class last year. This was to give them an idea of theatre of cruelty. However, the quality of the tape wasnt very good and the screen was very small. The idea was not conveyed, they did not understand what the performance was trying to do. The performance in question actually made me cry, however, our actors could not see why…hopefully we can show the tape again on a bigger screen with the sound louder and maybe they will be able to understand more clearly…
Tiny notes + one random idea
– lighting produces sensations of heat, cold, pain, anger and fear
– musical instruments are treated as part of the set
– music is extreme sensory experience
– shocking sound provokes completely emotive response from the audience
RANDOM IDEA
– Put Cenci in grotesque mask, banquet guests in neutral masks and Beatrice is perhaps no mask so that the audience sympathises with her?
UPDATE
GENERAL NOTE
– The performance is this time next week and I’m beginning to stress a little bit… I’m worried I don’t have enough specific research to back up by decisions for lighting and in particular set design – however, I don’t have all that much time to do extensive research at the moment.
– I have been so caught up in designing the lighting at the moment that I have no idea how my actors are going!! I hope they know their lines and I would like to be able to do a little session with them to see how they are going but I really really want to just get the freaking lighting finished!
Info on the Surrealist Movement
Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that was founded in 1924 by André Breton. Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.
The movement was begun primarily in Europe, centered in Paris, and attracted many of the members of the Dada community. Influenced by the psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung, there are similarities between the Surrealist movement and the Symbolist movement of the late 19th century.
Some of the greatest artists of the 20th century became involved in the Surrealist movement, and the group included Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, René Magritte, and many others.
The Surrealist movement eventually spread across the globe, and has influenced artistic endeavors from painting and sculpture to pop music and film directing.
The greatest known Surrealist artist is the world famous Salvador Dali.
Internet Research (some of it)
Notes from a Theatre of Cruelty
by ANTONIN ARTAUD
I employ the word “cruelty” in the sense of an appetite for life, a cosmic rigor, an implacable necessity, in the gnostic sense of a living whirlwind that devours the darkness; it is the consequence of an act. Everything that acts is a cruelty. It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that theatre must be rebuilt.
Gifted actors find by instinct how to tap and radiate certain powers; but they would be astonished if it were revealed that these powers, which have their material trajectory by and in the organs, actually exist, for they never realized that these sources of energy actually exist in their own bodies, in their organs.
Psychology, which works relentlessly to reduce the unknown to the known, to the quotidian and the ordinary, is the cause of the theater’s abasement and its fearful loss of energy, which has finally reached its lowest point.
The belief in a fluid materiality of the soul is indispensable to the actor’s craft. To know that a passion is material, that it is subject to the plastic fluctuations of the material, makes accessible an empire of passions that extend our sovereignty.
Furthermore, when we speak the word “life”, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from the surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach. And if there is one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, when instead we should become as victims burning at the stake, signaling each other through the flames.
And what is infinity ? We do not know exactly. It is a word we use to indicate WIDENING of our consciousness towards an inordinate, inexhaustible feasibility.
To make metaphysics out of a spoken language is to make the language express what it does not ordinarily express. It is to make use of it in a new, exceptional and unaccustomed fashion; to reveal its possibilities for producing physical shock; to deal with intonations in an absolutely concrete manner, restoring their power to shatter as well as to really manifest something and finally, to consider language as Incantation.
The true purpose of the theatre is to create Myths, to express life in its immense universal aspect, and from that life to extract images in which we find pleasure in discovering ourselves.
If our life lacks a constant magic, it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form instead of being impelled by their force. No matter how loudly we clamor for magic in our lives, we are really afraid of pursuing an existence entirely under its influence and sign.
http://www.paratheatrical.com/artaud.html
“Theater of cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/theater_of_cruelty_means_a_theater_difficult_and/326980.html
Artaud’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’
Opposing Traditional Theatrical Conventions
Aug 28, 2008 Tuirenn Hurstfield
Philosopher and structuralist Friedrich Nietzsche considered language to be a key player in a ‘continual process of human self-deception’[i] and theatre artist Antonin Artaud shared this same scepticism towards language. What Artaud detested most about Western theatre was the use of dialogue; he asked why the West could not conceive a theatre that did not rely on dialogue alone.
Dialogue, for Artaud, was “something written and spoken – [that] does not specifically belong to the stage but to books.”[ii] Nietzsche believed that words are only useful in so much as that they simplify or ‘freeze’ the chaotic and complex surroundings of human society, but that that was all they could do. The use of dialogue in theatre was, to Artaud, simply a method of expressing ‘psychological conflicts’ on stage and therefore a tool in creating the ‘theatre of illusion’ in the Aristotelian concept.
Signifiers – Not Dialogue
It was the Eastern influences and his personal opinions that led Artaud to develop a style of performance that would depend more on atmosphere, gesture and space over dialogue. He wanted to remove the need of a playwright[iii] and create a language based on signs not words, a ‘physical language’ that stimulated and appealed to the senses thus liberating the cruelty aspect of his theatre.
Above all else Artaud felt that “the role of the theatre must be to shake us out of complacency and our delusion of security.”[iv] To achieve this Artaud believed in inverting the conventional semiotics of theatre – this opposed both language and ‘illusionary’ meaning. By inverting a recognised convention the meaning is either removed or altered, he exemplifies: “We all agree a beautiful woman has a pleasing voice. Yet if when the world/began we heard all women call us by snorting … and greet us by trumpeting,/we would ever have associated the idea of trumpeting with the idea of a/beautiful woman…”[v]
This manner of inverting sign systems and meanings is often referred to as ‘deconstruction’, a term derived from the work of poststructuralist Jacques Derrida.
http://moderntheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/artauds_theatre_of_cruelty
http://moderntheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/artauds
Releasing a theatre of cruelty paradoxical manuals for cultural dialectics
_theatre_of_cruelty#ixzz0lpPwAJrZ
http://moderntheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/artauds
Releasing a theatre of cruelty paradoxical manuals for cultural dialectics
_theatre_of_cruelty#ixzz0lpPwAJrZ
http://www.shadowhousepits.com.au/releasing%20a%20theatre%20of%20cruelty.htm
Artaud: Theatre will never recover – Theatre Informal Essay
“Theatre will never recover its own specific powers of action until it has recovered its own language.” What do you think Artaud meant by this remark? Artaud thought that theatre was becoming far too reliant upon simple storylines and the spoken text, he believed theatre had become a one-trick pony run by greed.
Artaud thought theatre to be far more important than merely a night out, he believed theatre should work to cleanse an audience, in that it should inspire and work to ‘open the recesses of the heart’.
Artaud believed his own methods of theatre would ‘recover’ the specific powers of action of the theatre, which he believed where to change an audience so that they could experience the true essence of suffering and deep emotion.
Artaud aimed to do this by evoking a series of raw emotional experiences by using a raw and physical ‘New Language.’According to Artaud, theatres own language consists of a visual language of movement, of attitudes and of gestures. Artaud believed that unless theatre became less reliant on the spoken word and change its priorities it would never be able to produce a piece of theatre that would actually have an objective or purpose other that idle entertainment.
In comparison to his own ideas on performance, the orthodox theatre was far too reliant on a set structure and frustrated Artaud by distancing itself from an audience, therefore reducing the audiences experience and generally working against his goals.
Artaud stated that ‘The theatre of cruelty is where the spectator becomes so completely involved that she or he is changed by the event through the experiences she or he suffers with the characters on the stage.’
By relying so heavily on straightforward methods and the insufficient power of spoken words which would not dare to stray from a set script, the orthodox theatre was contradicting Artaud’s ‘Theatre of cruelty’ and working against the theatres overall purpose.
This is why Artaud refers to Recovery in his quote, as he believed that the orthodox method in theatre was distracting an audience and stealing from the true theatre whose function was to purify its spectators.
Artaud claimed theatre should have ‘control’ over an audience and often compared his theatre to the plague in that ‘theatre should swoop down amongst a crowd of spectators with the awesome horror of the plague, creating a complete upheaval- physical, mental and moral.’ This comparison with the theatre explained what Artaud believed his theatres ‘specific powers of action’ should be, but believed if he were to recover the theatre from the orthodox method he would need to recover the essence or language from the orthodox language, which above all relied heavily upon the spoken word.
To reclaim its own language, theatre would not completely dispel the orthodox spoken word but rather give vocals the importance that they have in dreams.
Artaud longed to work without words at the base of drama and saw through verbal communication and highlighted its inadequacies by stating that he believed it to be ‘glib and meaningless’
Artaud’s ‘concrete language’ would evoke a far more primitive reaction from an audience by using a primitive language of rhythm and sound, gesture and texture. As if to further this thought on the reaction of an audience in a primitive manner, Artaud describes his desired reaction in an audience by recounting his memory of a snake and its response to the rhythm of an instrument, which is on a gut level.
By comparing an audience to this charmed snake, Artaud shows he intends to charm an audience into reacting spontaneously and without thought, but identifies the spoken word cannot do this.
Artaud believed ‘concrete language’ was the only method that could provoke such a reaction from an audience and was sufficient to draw an audience into a position which would allow them to understand the deep and highly charged subject matter that would work to cleanse its audience.
The use of Rhythm etc would draw an audience into an animalistic state, in that they could be led and would effectively lure an audience into becoming involved emotionally with a piece, rather than keeping their distance and trusting in the spoken word which would evoke thought and the impersonal familiarity of the spoken text that is insufficient in making an audience feel collectively involved in the theatre.
This is the reason that Artaud was desperate to reclaim theatre from the grasp of the orthodox and its insufficient language and identified that the original language of theatre was what was needed to be recovered before Artaud could set about changing a spectators viewpoint and perspective on a subject matter.
Artaud identified theatre as an important way of making the general public see issues and human weakness, not just in the characters performing on the stage but amongst themselves.
In conclusion, Artaud decided that if his theatre was to take on any meaning it must differ from the orthodox which was, in his view distracting an audience from the real aims theatre should achieve. He identified that theatre was important in translating a message but it would not realize this plan unless it changed drastically from the path it was taking at the time.
Therefore Artaud refers to the word ‘recovery’ in that his goal was to reclaim the theatre from the orthodox and set about changing it so that it could serve a purpose other than simply to entertain.
Artaud realised his concrete language was a key way of making his own specific powers of action stand alone and differ from the norm.
Artaud saw his language as the solution as it would speak to the audience in a way that words could not.
Artaud looked to revolutionalise the theatre and achieve something new that would change the face of theatre and its audience.
http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/artaud-theatre-will-never-recover-theatre-informal
Major Works
Les Cenci, Artaud’s play about a man who rapes his own daughter and is then murdered by men the girl hires to eliminate him, typifies Artaud’s theater of cruelty. Les Cenci was produced in Paris in 1935 but was closed after seventeen dismal performances. Another illustration of Artaud’s work is Le jet de sang or The Fountain of Blood (1925), a farce about the creation of the world and its destruction by humans, especially women. Like many of Artaud’s other plays, scenarios, and prose, Les Cenci and The Fountain of Blood were designed to challenge conventional, civilized values and bring out the natural, barbaric instincts Artaud felt lurked beneath the refined, human facade. Of The Fountain of Blood, Albert Bermel wrote in Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty: “All in all, The Fountain of Blood is a tragic, repulsive, impassioned farce, a marvelous wellspring for speculation, and a unique contribution to the history of the drama.” More than for any particular work, Artaud is remembered more for his tormented life, for having turned himself inside out in the attempt to discover a way to transform theater and society, and for the concepts he developed for effectuating transformation. Le Théâtre de la cruauté (1933) and Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theater and Its Double)—Artaud’s most famous works—along with the novel Héliogabale (1934; Heliogabalus) and his blasphemous play Le jet de sang, rather than having an independent artistic existence, stand as manifestos and vehicles for approaching, if not achieving, the transformations Artaud proclaimed. According to author Susan Sontag: “Not until the great outburst of writing in the period between 1945 and 1948 … did Artaud, by then indifferent to the idea of poetry as a closed lyric statement, find a long-breathed voice that was adequate to the range of his imaginative needs—a voice that was free of established forms and open-ended, like the poetry of [Ezra] Pound.”
— URL is bookmarked on mac in sophies’ stuff folder
Handout for Workshop on Artaud
ARTAUD WORKSHOP WITH ACTORS
Basic premise of The Cenci:
– Challenges its audience’s morals very directly and asks them to revaluate their assumptions about what cruelty, evil, innocence and goodness actually are. What Beatrice right in killing Cenci seeing as he raped her and planned to kill her family? Or in fact does that make them one and the same?
– Attacks the moral codes of the church and religion
Language:
– The intention of Artaud’s play is not just to be real, but hyper real, super real – to go beyond what is normally considered reality by transcending the ordinary and the realistic.
– Artaud describes his theatre as a response to the tendency of his era “to forget to wake up”
– He attempts to shock audiences out of their ethical complacency to understand the meaningless of their moral systems.
– We want the audience to be shocked and appalled by Cenci’s actions. The audience should best be able to relate to Beatrice even though she does plot to kill her father. This is because the audience imagines she has some sort of morality within her whereas it is obvious that Cenci does not.
– Artaud wanted his plays to be cathartic experiences – like having a nightmare and being relieved at the end. He wanted his audiences to feel cleansed from imposing moral structures and so on…
QUOTES FROM PEOPLE WHO GET ARTAUD!
“Artaud worked heavy with fractured language, your body should always represent what you’re trying to say, though your body does not necessarily represent a human or even a living thing and more importantly remember language does not even have to be verbal, rather than distorted and inhuman sounds it could be created by gesture. If dialogue is used, it shouldn’t be the only form of communication; ritualistic movements, gestures and repetitive sound patterns can replace traditional speech etc…”
“Try thinking more of Artaud as being a release of pure raw emotion… the stuff you can’t act but you actually have to feel… Think about how you want your audience to feel. Artaud’s Theatre Of Cruelty used to make people vomit, scream, faint and other such things when they saw it”
“Basically the best thing to remember and know is gestures, sounds, images, unusual scenery, overwhelming lighting and more should create a language of its own that can subvert logic, reason and human language in performing Artaud as he tried to mirror life but took it to extremes, he held no limits in achieving an emotional response from his audience, always when performing Artaud focus directly on the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch:
Laban
– Laban created a movement vocabulary which can be used in all different styles of theatre
– It contains eight effort actions: wring, press, flick, glide, float, dab, slash and punch
– These will be useful in creating your characters and showing emotion
– People and characters alike generally use predominantly two or three of these in everyday life
Sophie's IB Journal 