Antonin
Artaud, it seems, was a Roman Catholic with strong Gnostic leanings.
He also was a habitual drug user as a result of a childhood illness.
Much has also been romanticized about his madness. Artaud was
certainly plagued by mental instabilities. But to suggest his
irrational behaviour and delusional ravings were inspired prophecies
is to debase the very real contribution his life and art made to the
development and survival of theatre and theatrical processes both
already achieved and in potential. Artaud might have been a powerful
modern day Shaman had he been able to transcend the bind of his
mental instability.
From
my reading of Artaud and his own writings, I am sure that his
madness (if this is the appropriate term) was certainly partly a
result of his contradictory highly attuned spirituality and ingrained
beliefs in puritanical, if not Manachean / Saint Augustan, inspired
beliefs in the essential evil nature of all things flesh and the
higher order of all things spiritual. There is considerable writing
from Artaud that is contradictory on this subject. At one moment we
are to be erotic and sexually explicit and then we are supposed to
accept his assumption that all things sexual are filthy and
degenerate and base. In his last years he is both aesthetic Catholic
receiving Holy Communion and blaspheming demon out to destroy the
hold of religion over people's desire for eternity.
Artaud
was dabbling with and held prisoner by religion because there was
little else to provide adequate explanation for the absurdities of
life and the quest for meaning below the lies and profanities of
officially sanctioned doctrine (from the left and right of the
socio/political spectrum). And in different moments he spat on such
platforms of deceit.
When
his colleagues attacked him for his Theatre Alfred Jarrie's staging
a play by the Catholic writer and political aspirant Paul Claudel,
Artaud denied his original reasons for doing the play and publicly
adopted the shallow reasoning of the dogmatic surrealists who shouted
the play down. Artaud's own insecurities about his contradictory
beliefs might be the source of an academic study some day. However,
for our purposes, it reveals a very human side to Antonin Artaud: a
side which suggests vulnerability and sincerity coupled with a need
for acceptance; an acceptance which Artaud was never to receive in
his life time!
It
also suggests we cannot take verbatim what Artaud wrote. Artaud
didn't prescribe methods of working. He was no Stanislavsky,
Mayerhold or Brecht. Artaud's life was his prescription for art and
change. Metaphor preceded reality. Reality preceded metaphor!
Absurdity held truth. Common sense was comprised of lies. Semantics
were for arguing over.
But
essentially, his theatre needed to explode the commonly held belief
systems and infect believers with alternative possibilities and
realities. His ravings, writings and public performances were
testimony to such explosions. The images and metaphorical seeds
plague us with their haunting resonances which, in all likelihood,
match our quiet contemplations when separated from the need for
rational discourse.
We
are left to sift through his writings and life to form a conjecture
as to what it was all about. And for me, Artaud's life and art in
purest form was about release; release from the organs of the body,
release from strictures of the mind, from the inadequacy of words,
from cultural hegemony, from stifling routines, from society's self
destruction, and from boring orthodoxies of all kinds. The list goes
on. But if we start by identifying Artaud's central idea as being
that of "release", then other simple to comprehend concepts follow.
Release
of WHAT from WHAT for WHAT?
All his
writing implies something more than what is observed. By simply
reproducing the observable world or by reducing observable action to
banal psychological concepts of "motivation" and
"intent" or simple cause and effect, Artaud seems to
suggest that we reproduce the lies and deceptions that only reinforce
the human binds that hold our reality captured. But to release the
more fundamental foundations belying the observed action we need to
shock and expiate that which isn't initially revealed. Such a notion
is closer to the Greek "fates" or Jungian
"archetypes" or even computer "templates" which
contain the source of meaning in a more comprehensive or embracing
way than can be identified through the microcosmic psychological explanations.
Theatre for
Artaud is then about releasing the hidden patterns beneath the
observable world. In doing so it is more about dream logic than any
naturalistic ordering of events and actions. Our dreams may terrorize
us or provoke irrational fear that lingers into our everyday
activity. They reveal what we dare not think or speak. Collectively,
dreams become archetypes that hover and become manifest in spasmodic creations.
For Artaud,
the body's organs are like parts of the house where secrets are
bordered up as in Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell Tale Heart". The
body is like the large house with sealed up cavities hiding bodies of
one's victims. Our secret crimes are stored but don't actually die.
They seek to escape. Like the virus or bacteria, they cause
inflammations that can lead to disease and decay as they chip away at
their bordered up cells in order to escape. And like the "living
dead" we cannot destroy them. The more we try, the more
ferocious and persistent they become.
A culture that
seeks to deny its guilt and foundations in violence likewise lays the
seeds for virulent growths that seek excising in outbursts of racism,
chauvinism, sexual repression and genocide. Cultures and individuals
transfer the location of these hidden entities under layers of
institutionalized bordering up which might run over generations.
Ultimately they lose the memory of the exact location of the problem,
so embedded that it becomes part of the fabric of the organism itself.
In the
individual the result is physical and mental disease. In culture, the
result is social upheaval, violence and repression. Artaud suggests
theatre is the means for expiating and releasing these toxins from
the organs of the body; be it from an individual or society. It is a
kind of exorcism requiring purification of the one performing the
ceremony while exhibiting violent shocks on the party subject to the
exercise. Individual and society devils are so imbedded that it is
necessary for drastic action to release them; exposing them to make
them manageable.
Clearly such a
purpose for theatre is not easily or readily accepted in contemporary
society. And this provides a main source of criticism of Artaud's
ideal theatre. Whether the concept is necessarily flawed or whether
it simply hasn't been tried is another question.
Alternatively,
is Artaud's theatre primarily for the participants in its creation
much like the monastic way is for the monks or nuns in organized
religions? While there is a Shamanistic tendency in those who have
adopted Artaud-like theatre positions (eg. Grotowsky) the essential
element is still the actor/audience relationship. This doesn't
suggest a cloistered function for the artist. Rather it is one of engagement.
Release
through the actors' M.E.S.H.
Without being
side-tracked by the issue of Artaud's madness (or questionable
sanity) I will now focus on the means for implementing Artaud's
"release". I deliberately speak of "release" as
opposed to his well publicized "theatre of cruelty". My
reading of Artaud is subjective and others will disagree with the
model gleaned from his disparate focus.
I propose four
states which the actor needs to achieve in order to fulfill the
potential of Artaud's theatre. These are:
-
the Mesmeric
state;
-
the Erotic
state;
-
the Sculptural
state;
-
the Heightened
Emotional state.
For ease of
usage, I suggest the anagram MESH.
Exercises and
improvisations can be developed and practiced for achieving the
Actors' MESH. While the third and
fourth states are common enough foundations within acting training,
the first two are certainly not generally emphasized. Performers in
the Japanese Bhuto theatre might well be attuned to aspects of these
areas, needless to say, they are not part of mainstream training in
the Western theatre traditions.
As a word of
caution, I also suggest it may not be necessary to achieve the MESH
state for all of a performance. However, to achieve the kind of
theatre implied in Artaud's writings, the MESH is
necessary for a major proportion of the performance.
I now suggest
that the MESH be achieved in three areas:
-
the body;
-
the voice;
-
interaction
with space, self and objects.
Creating
the MESH
The Mesmeric
State is where the actor is neither emotional nor intellectual but
is in a constant state of movement and rhythm with intensity ebbing
and flowing in response to external or internal prompts. It is not a
zombie-like state, unless such a manifestation is required. In fact,
the Mesmeric State may well be
extremely vigorous and even violent. Where there is emotional
intensity, such emotion is derived from external stimulus as at a
rock concert or a political rally. Frenzy may well be an example.
The Mesmeric State might
resemble a collective autism where individual volition is subjugated
to some unseen force. And it is more.
It is not
something that can simply be rustled up with a bit of chanting and
banging of drums. The Mesmeric State
is the state in which magic and a true alchemy is evoked. It is
through this that a "theatre of the invisible made visible"
(Peter Brook's term) is possible. The Mesmeric
State coupled with the Erotic State
provides the distinguishing features that define and separate this
theatre of release from some academic exercise performed in the name
of theatre but with the sterility of a fluorescent room.
The Erotic
State is one of inner stillness and awareness of personal shape,
spirit and existence in front of another. It is active within its
apparent stillness. It is one of acceptance of physical and emotional
exposure. It accepts personal self-consciousness in oneself and
within the audience and the resulting tension this may evoke. It is
the opposite of denial of this essentially erotic act. It is accepts
that art cannot exist without sexuality. In such acceptance, it flies
in the face of the more customary institutionalized denial of this
connection. To achieve this state, the actor must develop a highly
developed personal acceptance of self and a high tolerance and
embracing of stillness, silence and personal communication with the
self. It requires that actors become personally aware of their own
charisma and accept, without flinching, that their art may call upon
such usage when intellect and technique prove inadequate.
The Sculptural
State is concerned with the actors' ability to objectify personal
presence in a given space in order to achieve an image of value. The
way the actor connects with other actors and objects and the
dimensions of the space should not be the sole prerogative of the
director or choreographer. As most acting training is now for the
screen where all such decisions are made, the actors' thinking in
sculptural terms is diminishing. But to achieve a Sculptural
State, the actor needs to be acutely aware of the relationship
between sound and space; between the character "point of
view" and distance; between that which is dislodged in order to
make way for his/her presence; the different effects created by
extension of the body or the adoption of different costume or
properties; the point of entry and point of departure from the focus
of the scene or the space itself. The list can be extended.
The Heightened
Emotional state is the most familiar of the MESH.
All acting training will demand of actors a degree of heightened
emotional response; getting in tune with one's own emotions etc.
Working in an Artaud inspired theatre though means heightening the
intensity of performance over periods that will require great
stamina. This contrasts with the mainly static nature of so much
stage acting that mimics the screen form.
Essentially,
invoking of the MESH is a
reinvigorating process to place creativity back into the body and to
provide an alternative schema through which theatrical exploration
may take place. The MESH is a deliberate construction based on the
principles and ideas articulated by Antonin Artaud. It attempts to
incorporate the real processes involved in dynamic performance and
give recognition to the essentially artistic as opposed to the
academic construction of theatre with its partitioned hegemony of
intellectual conceit.
Shadow House PITS
is attempting to give a physical form to the theories, principles and
ideas articulated by Antonin Artaud. Obviously, such work will not be
without controversy and criticism. But we are not concerned with
success or failure. Rather we wish to explore something that is worth
exploring. We wish to invite audiences and all those concerned with
the creative process to join us and be part of this exploration. We
wish to focus a means through which culture may challenge and
rejuvenate itself. This project isn't an end in and off itself,
rather it should be seen as a part of acqainting personal experience
with art and what it means to be a social being in association with
other social beings. Let us expose the act of creation with all its
messiness and potential for disaster to scrutiny and experience. For
here lies the defining feature of theatre's relevance and value for
any culture.
Joe Woodward
(January 2004)
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