Abstract
Di Ponio looks to the Theatre of Cruelty after Antonin Artaud, specifically Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz’s Royal Shakespeare Company-funded Theatre of Cruelty season (1964), which provided the opportunity for investigation into Artaud’s theory of performance through a series of workshops and productions, including Peter Weiss’s The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade. The play, which doubles the early modern theatre, reflects the volatility of its own time and uses a penetrative language―that of action and gesture, rather than poetry and prose—to connect with and impact its audience.
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Notes
- 1.
By no means an exhaustive list of theatre artists and practitioners influenced or regarded as being influenced by Artaud’s Theatre and Its Double.
- 2.
For a comprehensive and reliable analysis of Bertolt Brecht’s theatre, see Martin Esslin, Brecht: The Man and His Work. Latest revised edition is published by Norton, 1974.
- 3.
The Conquest of Mexico , for example, was chosen because it considers the question of colonization relevant to a developing world.
- 4.
‘ces thèmes seront transportés directement sur le théâtre et matérialisés en mouvements, en expressions et en gestes avant d’être coulés dans les mots.’ TD, iv, 148.
- 5.
The rise of the director—Regisseur in German—is recent and aristocratic, and Jannarone names Georg ii, arriving in Berlin in 1874 with his theatre troupe, as the first; his tour influenced Konstantin Stanislavski, André Antoine, and Max Reinhardt (Artaud and His Doubles, p. 136). Jannarone argues that the origins of one person taking artistic and technical control of a production are as early as the eighteenth century with J.W. von Goethe in Weimer and David Garrick in Drury Lane, but the latter’s management was nevertheless collaborative, comprising Garrick and James Lacy (Artaud and His Doubles, note 6, p. 222).
- 6.
Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968; repr. Penguin, 1990), pp. 60–61.
- 7.
Even the best directors can fail in this regard, as was the case in Brook ’s Theatre of Cruelty production of Oedipus starring John Gielgud. In his chronicle of the National Theater’s 50-year history, Daniel Rosenthal recites an anecdote detailing Brook’s plan to emulate a satyr-play which traditionally concluded the three tragedies. The company were told to improvise a joyous atmosphere, and gyrated and danced, all except for one Scottish actor, Frank Wylie, who shouted, ‘Bollocks!’ at the prospect. See ‘This is not going to be fun’, in The National Theatre Story (London: Oberon Books, 2014).
- 8.
Although it is arguably more difficult to physically incorporate these elements in producing a contemporary play, one need only look to the success of Jonathan Larson’s mega-musical Rent which incorporates the terrifying frenzy associated with the post-modern plague: the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
- 9.
Peter Brook, The Shifting Point : Forty years of theatrical exploration 1946–1987 (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 47.
- 10.
Charles Marowitz, ‘Notes on the Theatre of Cruelty’, The Tulane Drama Review, 11.2 (1966), 152–72.
- 11.
Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz, The Theatre of Cruelty (Stratford: Royal Shakespeare Company, 1964), [no page].
- 12.
The Theatre of Cruelty. Dir. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz. The LAMDA Theatre Club, 1964. The Shakespeare Centre Library, RSC/SM/1/1964/THC1, [no page].
- 13.
Richard Schechner, Performance Theory, rev. edn (London: Routledge, 1988; repr. 2006), p. 197.
- 14.
Stephen Barber, Hijikata: Revolt of the Body (London: Creation Books, 2006), pp. 5, 20.
- 15.
‘La nécessité d’agir directement et profondément sur la sensibilité par les organes invite, du point de vue sonore, à rechercher des qualités et des vibrations de sons absolument inaccoutumées, qualités que les instruments de musique actuels ne possèdent pas, […] Elles poussent aussi à rechercher, en dehors de la musique, des instruments et des appareils qui, basés sur des fusions spéciales ou des alliages renouvelés de métaux, puissent atteindre un diapason nouveau de l’octave, produire des sons ou des bruits insupportables, lancinants.’ TD, iv, 113–14.
- 16.
‘Nous ne jouerons pas de pièce écrite, mais autour de thèmes, de faits ou d’œuvres connus, nous tenterons des essais de mise en scène directe.’ TD, iv, 117.
- 17.
‘6° Un Conte du Marquis de Sade, où l’érotisme sera transposé, figuré allégoriquement et habillé, dans le sens d’une extériorisation violente de la cruauté, et d’une dissimulation du reste.’ TD, iv, 119. Marat/Sade may not have been penned by the Marquis de Sade, but Weiss ’s play fulfils Artaud’s stipulations as set in his Theatre of Cruelty, first manifesto.
- 18.
Paul Gray, ‘A Living World. An Interview with Peter Weiss’, ed. by Erika Munk, The Tulane Drama Review, 11.1 (1966), 106–14 (p. 111).
- 19.
Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade, ‘First Rabble-Rousing of Jacques Roux’, pp. 52–53.
- 20.
Anthony Neilson’s 2011 updated revival of Marat/Sade saw Coulmier control inmates via smartphones. As Michael Billington attests, the updates to the play are beneficial because they resonate with a contemporary audience familiar with apparatuses of control: ‘Marat’s belief in equality and freedom from oppression chimes with a world of street protests against dictatorship and popular demonstrations against the banker’s iniquities. Equally Sade’s advocacy of untrammelled individualism has its echo in an erotically obsessed, narcissistic society enthralled by technology, celebrity and material goods. And, just as Weiss ’s play comes to no definite conclusion, so Neilson’s production leaves us to decide which set of values should prevail.’ Michael Billington, ‘Marat/Sade – review’, The Guardian, 21 October 2011 https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/21/marat-sade-review.
- 21.
At the end of the film version, the asylum patients begin climbing over the bars in their hopes to enter the audience space and make their way towards freedom.
- 22.
If the plays were similar to the Weiss play, the cure might be as dangerous as the disease.
- 23.
Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz, The Theatre of Cruelty (London: LAMDA, 1964), [no page].
- 24.
Peter Brook and others, ‘Marat/Sade Forum’, ed. by Richard Schechner, The Tulane Drama Review, 10.4 (1966), 214–37 (p. 222).
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Di Ponio, A. (2018). After Artaud: Peter Brook and The Theatre of Cruelty Season. In: The Early Modern Theatre of Cruelty and its Doubles. Avant-Gardes in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92249-2_8
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