Practitioner focus: Artaud

For almost nine years of his life Artaud was incarcerated in institutions or undertook periods of voluntary exile. It is little wonder then that during his life he became a silenced voice in the development of theatre. It was only after his death that his ideas came to be recognised. His written records of his work detailed how he saw theatre as a weapon with which to destroy present society. Perhaps he recognised that with this objective his theatre could never be extreme enough to achieve his goal.

Artaud was a man of chaos, making the development of his work difficult to identify in its progression. What is clear is that Artaud's life imitated his art. A man plagued by addiction, he spent his creative life working in isolation; a solitary figure of revolt. He remained uncompromising in taking theatre back to an experience for the senses. Many will recognise the term ‘Theatre of Cruelty,’ which is less to do with murder and torture and more a way to challenge and heighten the spectator's emotional response.