Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double (1938)

• Theatre of Cruelty

• Born in Marseilles in 1896

• Worked with and against the Surrealist Movement (Breton)
  

• Short-lived theater group in Paris (long-time dream, Theatre of Cruelty)
  

• 1937-46: Arrested in Ireland and interred in French mental institutions

• Not enthusiastic about Sartre and Existentialist Movement

• Died at 52 in Paris in 1948
  

• Synopsis from Theatrehistory.com

• Antoninartaud.org: a bilingual site, with mostly links to other sites

Artaud's Theater of Cruelty

    * spectator is in the center of the spectacle (927b)

    * come up with new masterpieces, or unknown plays -- wants plays that respond to modern audiences (925)

    * wants the audience to be active, not passive (927b)

    * wants actors to use GESTURE and physicality; actors use original gestures

    * no more "psychologically real" characters and plays (926)

    * "A violent and concentrated action is a kind of lyricism" (Artaud 927).

    * magic and ritual

Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction" (1935-36)

• Epic theater

• Alienation Effect (Verfremdungseffekt)

Biography

- 1898: Born Eugen Bertold Friedrich Brecht in Augsburg, Germany

- 1914: Constructs a puppet theater with friends, even charging admission

- 1917-21: Studies Medicine

- 1918: Works in army hospital

- 1923: Baal

- 1924-33: Works with directors Max Reinhardt and Ewin Piscator in Berlin; develops theory of epic theater; becomes a Marxist

- 1928: Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill

- 1933-41: Exile in Scandinavia

- 1941-47: Exile in California; tried for Un-American activities and moves to Communist East Germany

- 1941: Mother Courage and Her Children

- 1943: The Life of Galileo; The Good Woman of Szechwan

- 1948: The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Antigone

- 1956: Dies of a heart attack in East Berlin

Brecht's Epic Theater

- Zeitstück = contemporary play, Piscatorbühne = Piscator's Stage, Lehrstück = didactic play (Brecht 919)    

- Völkischer Beobachter (Brecht 921b) = People's Observer

* actors detach themselves from the character so that audiences can critique the character; actors separate themselves from character

- Verfremdungseffekt (V-Effekt) = alienation effect

- audiences might react with disgust rather than sympathy (920a)

    * actors might wear masks

    * actors acknowledge fourth wall

    * Brecht wants his audience to react with alienation to characters

    * didactic theater: wants to teach audiences to think

    * screens to announce the plot of scenes or projections that announce keywords