As many of you have already noted, Artaud's manifesto for The Theatre of Cruelty appears, at times, confusing and contradictory. He is insistent on the notion of creating a new language, 'somewhere in between gesture and thought' and yet, alludes to the deconstruction of Shakespearean works in order to re-stage them. Even though the practitioner intends to re-write and revise Jacobean and Elizabethan texts, this appears to undermine his opinion that we should no longer be invested in 'mastepieces'. For this very purpose, I propose that the staging of Bluebeard would be suitable in accordance with the manifesto.
Bluebeard is a fairytale, a genre which is already fluid in structure, theme and thus, interpretation on the stage. It is quite a sinister account of a violent, dark man, who marries many young, virginal women, whom he kills in a torture chamber on their wedding night. The last bride-to-be discovers the room and attempts to flee. Artaud stressed that his Theatre of Cruelty was not to be explicitly violent or a spectacle for merely aesthetic purposes; despite the fact that Bluebeard is, indeed, physically volatile, he could deeply explore the notion of psychological torment and fantasy. Artaud's focus on 'jouissance' emphasises a clear link between the binaries of pleasure/pain, sex/violence, and many more.. Staging of a fairytale allows for the exploration of dream-like states: physical jerks, groans, exaggerated gesture and unintelligble language would create an unnerving experience for the audience, but one that would make them investigate the realms beyond real life and cultured humanity. This, I believe, was at the forefront of Artaud's intentions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I realise my own error here in suggesting that Artaud could examine 'psychological torment' through a physical adaptation of the story of Bluebeard, as he himself said that the mind and it's analysis should be abandoned from The Theatre of Cruelty. I meant to highlight, however, that the audience's confrontation with images of eroticism, violence, and breaking of socially acceptable behaviours, could enable them to immerse in a new light of understanding, 'the higher idea of poetry', as he states.
Post a Comment