This week, a review of Artaud's Jet of Blood -
...Artaud envisioned a theatre was, at its core, religious: what he
sought was an experience which, like the "chemical marriage" of the
Alchemists, would resolve his warring dualities into a coherent whole.
Sontag is correct when she points to the extremity of his "moral
rigour", commenting that Oliver Cromwell and Girolamo Savanarola might
well have approved the theatre he proposed.
Certainly, Artaud shares with figures like Osama bin Laden or Pol Pot
a singular and apocalyptic moral vision that seeks purification
through destruction and violence. It is not hard to imagine Artaud
following Stockhausen, who in a widely reviled remark shortly after
the 9/11 attacks, called the destruction of the Twin Towers "the
greatest work of art there has ever been!" "I am not a madman," Artaud
said, late in his life. "I am a fanatic." Like all Artaud's
self-diagnoses, this statement has the cold coruscation of truth.
What, then, to make of competing claims for an "authentic" experience
of Artaud? Outside a lunatic asylum, a war zone or a concentration
camp, I am not sure whether there can be such a thing. It is possible
to think of the theatrics of torture in Abu Ghraib - the posing for
photographs, the obliterating of the human body, the totalising word,
the sexual loathing - as the ultimate Artaudian theatre. Like many
poets, Artaud was lamentably literal.
I can't think of anyone who has taken Artaud's ideas in toto and
realised them in the theatre; and in my heart, I can't imagine why
anyone would want to. He is a catalyst and a provocation, rather than
a model. Grotowski's actor-centred quest for sacred truth or Brook's
aesthetic sensuousness are far too humane to be genuinely Artaudian.
Making Artaud is, in many ways, also an unmaking of Artaud.
More at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All the best
Alison
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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