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Artaud Through Practice

Of all the main twentieth century practitioners of the theatre, Artaud seems to frighten many teachers the most. This is because he doesn't set down a system of acting or production that one can follow through and which makes sense in a logical satisfying way, as Stanislavski does. Nor does he have a clear political and social aim which results in a style and manner of production to further that aim, as does Brecht. No, Artaud writes like a poet and visionary, sending off arrows of fire into the night: he fires up the reader as he has fired up many theatre practitioners, such as Grotowski and Brook. He generates excitement in those who seek to follow his ideas, acting as a catalyst, a liberator, and it is that which makes him both frightening and fascinating.

Arguably what Artaud has to offer is more influential to modern day theatre than either Stanislavski or Brecht.

Translating Artaud's ideas into a practical followable form for a teacher and a class of students is challenging, not because the work itself is difficult, but because at best any practical work we propose is guesswork. Would Artaud have proposed this way of working? Would he, if given the chance to form a System, have translated his visionary ideas into this exercise or that? We have no way of knowing.

No excuses are made for the fact that many of the exercises are inventions. Jeni has genuinely attempted to understand and translate Artaud's writings into workable and practical exercises that build into a logical and recognisable 'style'. Aspects of this 'style' can be found in Physical Theatre, Visual Theatre and other similar theatre forms in current practice today, but none really embrace the Total Theatre of Artaud's visions. Perhaps because it is impossible, or unworkable or simply would be 'too, too much'. Any interpretation or effort at 'translation' into ordinary or workable terms is, of necessity, a reduction and Jeni is very conscious of that. But, ultimately, students must write about him and so his ideas, to be made embraceable, have to be reduced, interpreted, translated into normal theatre language.


Contents:

General Introduction; First Lessons;

Part One: Exploring the Theories:

  1. Cruel to Oneself
  2. Larger than Life
  3. From Rhythm to Ritual
  4. Breathing
  5. The Problem with Language & the Western Theatre
  6. Language - The Lessons of Surrealism
  7. Finding a Concrete Language of Symbols
  8. Humour
  9. The Audience (i) - Theatre as Life
  10. The Audience (ii) - Towards Total Theatre

Part Two: Approaches to text:

  1. Approaches to text
  2. Work on 'Metamorphosis'
  3. Work on 'Agamemnon'
  4. Work on 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
  5. Work on 'Woyzek'

Conclusion


Sample Pages from Artaud Through Practice:

Finding a Concrete Language of Symbols

Images or symbols have the power to evoke an emotional response which is often not logical. The intellect tends not to rationalise 'I am feeling this and this. because of the powerful suggestiveness of the image I have read or seen'; it just feels. As in the word association game played in the last section, imagery sets up a chain reaction of emotional responses in each of us that is both individual and universal. That is why it is so potent in poetry. For example, the word 'night' sets up a chain reaction of responses which are shared in most areas of the world: darkness, death, fear, destruction, evil, etc. Test out the connotations for your students with the following series of words.

Each of these, if they are prodded a little, should evoke responses which are not literal. For instance, I would expect 'horizon' to stimulate ideas of goals, aims, adventure, etc. 'Tree' might provoke Christian responses as well as ideas of strength.

How much more powerful does this all become when it is visual, not tied just to a word or words in a particular context. The poet works often by appealing to the visual inner eye of the listener or reader but Artaud proposes bringing that rich world of allusion to the visual art form of the theatre. And this proposal is enormous in its repercussions; the effect on the audience of visual imagery is extraordinary, providing it is accompanied by all the other areas of Total Theatre: light, sound, colour, etc, to help block out the impulse to question. Visuals work intensely on the brain and are far more memorable than anything heard. Test this out by asking, after the class have seen any show, what they remember about the show. It will nearly always be something visual; very rarely a memorable line or speech. Couple, then, the power of visuals with the ability the brain has to spiral off into its own series of allusions, sparked off by a particular image, and you have an extraordinary ability to influence and affect the audience, as it were subliminally - that is, bypassing the intellect which would seek to explain and thus reduce the effect of what it has seen.

I remember the billowing black cloth that engulfed the stage and swallowed the actors, as an image of the Holocaust, in Theatre de Complicite's "The Street of Crocodiles'; I will never forget it. Nor shall I ever forget Peter Schumann's huge sorrowing female puppet figure as the symbol of Vietnam, when I caught his 'Bread and Puppet Theatre' at the end of the 60s. Images stick.


Practical Work

1. After an initial discussion about symbols and their connotations, as suggested above, divide the students into smallish groups, four or five, and ask them to come up with visual symbols for the following stimuli. From the beginning encourage the use of sound where appropriate.

It might be a good idea to brainstorm a few first. Encourage the use of the word 'like'.... Boredom is 'like' a clock ticking very slowly..... a droning fly underlined by the droning voice of a teacher..... leaves drooping in heat..... etc.

2. Now take this a little further. A symbol for non-conformity might be a group of people marching, or doing a strict routine of movements in a robotic repetitive manner, with one person beginning to dance slowly and dreamily. Adding sounds to this, extend the idea. What happens next? How do the conformers react to the non-conformist? Using wherever possible the whole of their small group, find more extended symbols to show:

Symbols can be mixed. For instance, an argument could involve the slinky moves and hisses of big cats at one time, the snarling and howling of a dog-fight at another, the fizzing and explosiveness of a match igniting at another. The idea is to hit the audience hard and fast with a whirligig of impressions, not all of which will resonate for every person but enough will.

Discuss what other additions might have helped too - sounds, lights, visual images back-projected on the cyclorama, props, costumes, colour washes, or anything else. It is time to start feeding them towards the idea of Total Theatre.

3. Try now expressing a whole simple story-line in a symbolic way. The idea used in the First Lessons section could be re-explored. It might be useful to compare the results of the work then with the present, now that so much more has been learned. Or, one of the following ideas might work:

Before beginning, the students need to talk through how to prepare a storyline in an Artaudian way. The story cannot be approached in a logical, naturalistic manner, with single characters allocated to individual members of the group. Certainly two people have to be, for instance, the young lovers but the rest of the group will be taking an active part throughout, expressing symbolically the emotional states of mind of one or other of the lovers, as well as taking on parts of the storyline as other characters where necessary, even becoming physical things such as doors slamming, bubbles bursting.

Remind them too of the arsenal of other tools they have already learned about for making a physical piece effective: breathing, rhythm, sound, repetition, chanting, music, ritual, masks, words used as sounds, concrete language.

The insistence throughout this study programme on performance and trying ideas out on an audience is for a number of reasons. Firstly, Artaud himself is concerned with trying to affect an audience in a very profound way. He tenders many experimental ideas as to how this effect can best be achieved, some of which we have explored already but many are to come in the next few sections. Mainly, though, some of his ideas are so extraordinary that it takes a particular type of courage to carry them through. This attitude of daring, of risk-taking, must be built in to the students from as early as possible. It is inherent, I believe, anyway, in any form of theatre - actors put themselves on the line by the very nature of live theatre, which can fail for any number of reasons and is for ever changing, subtly, from performance to performance [something which frustrated practitioners like Craig intensely - he wanted to pin theatre down to exactitude and consistency, refusing to accept the volatile changeability of actors and of audiences]. On top of the natural fluctuation of atmosphere between actor and audience, Artaud imposes another risk: the risk of the extraordinary and the extreme. So as not to cripple your students with fear, they must become used to performing throughout the course, even if it is just little snippets to other groups of their peers. They must understand that sometimes things will not work, but instead of feeling foolish, they should use the whole experience as an ideal opportunity for discovering why things work or do not, and for pushing themselves into braver and braver experiments.

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