The study of French genius or madman (depending on viewpoint) Antonin Artaud is often left to Key Stage 5 (ages 16-18). However, there is little reason, except perhaps some squeamishness, to steer clear from him in the GCSE years.
To prepare the ground, some discussion of three contemporary questions will be helpful with students. Does violence on TV, video games and in film, encourage copycat and further violence? Is man a savage under the skin of his/her outward rationality? (Think the Lord of the Flies story here). And is violence worse in males or females?
By way of warm up in the practicals, make largish groups and invite them to choose either Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth, reduce the story to the bare bones to tell it in mime/movement, minimal words and in two minutes. After sharing, discuss about the blandness of it, the jumble.
The Shock
Ask: how could they make the audience sit up and take notice? How to surprise or shock watchers? Lights? Sound effects? Exaggerated movement? High volume? High speed? Now they are beginning to see the requirements of Artaud’s ‘Total Theatre’.
Go back to the Shakespeare, and ask them to focus on one heightened moment, like Juliet’s distress at Romeo’s exile, or Macbeth’s anguish at murdering Duncan. Find extreme physical ways of expressing the emotion. Whole group symbolically? Aggressive voices of conscience?
They must experiment. Artaud’s theatre sought to effect a spiritual change in the audience by reflecting their secret crimes/obsessions/hostilities to release their inner energies, to cleanse them, release them of their guilt. Some students may switch off at this point, but most won't.
Sometimes a handout summarising Theatre and Its Double, Total Theatre and Theatre of Cruelty is useful now. They need to know that some of the influences on Artaud included surrealism, oriental theatre, Balinese theatre, drugs and psychoanalysis, masks, sterility of social drama, magic and myth, colour, rhythm, ritual, ceremony and spectacle.
Artaud was a Dadaist, a movement that arose as reaction to the meaninglessness of war. It was an anarchic response to officialdom and the Establishment. So he reduced the domination of text to a new language between gesture and thought. He homed on vocal flexibility, chants, drones and exclamations. He not only shocked, he wanted to disturb.
The Scream
Get students in a standing circle, start to breath in unison, then cannon, then unison again. Try sitting, kneeling, lying to make different breathing sounds. This can be extended to groans, cries, moans and laughter. Whatever technique used, get a whole class ritual feeling with this drama exercise.
Artaud said: ‘In Europe, nobody knows how to scream anymore, they have forgotten they have a body on stage, they have lost the use of their throats’. As a primal experience in freeing the actor, take The Cenci (1935), and use it to build a scream.
‘Collona comes to the guests, each moving in a small circle closing in a spiral, she makes larger circle around. 10 seconds. The men are the whirlwind, outside the circles. The women are in heap in centre, each struggling with ghosts or demons. Scream’. Have some fun experimenting with that!
Take nonsense words: klaver striva/cavour tavina/scaver kavina/akar triva, and again, experiment with voice, gestures, movement and musical instruments. A 1917 surrealist poem, Karawane, by Hugo Ball is a superb exercise in the bizarre. Artaud moved as far as possible from Stanislavki’s psychological character-led drama.
The Spurt of Blood
A poem by Artaud, Rite of the Black Sun, is another basic text that can be used to try different textual, vocal interpretations. The idea of sick choral poem is powerful. Rhythms are usable with both percussion and body beating.
There is material available about the reality of Artaud’s acting of a plague victim, which conveys both more of his theories and allows ideas from students to be explored and developed. The violence inherent in much of his work can be minimised somewhat, if preferred. Peter Brook’s famous Marat/Sade, available on DVD, is a study in some Artaud techniques.
The short, surrealist, obscure play The Spurt (Or Jet) of Blood is one of his few actual scripts to survive. Strange, it certainly is. To stage it remains one of the great theatrical challenges, although modern technology helps.
There are several versions on YouTube, which can also serve as an introduction to the practitioner. It’s an anti-rational, incoherent story, just primal states (love, sex, death). Its noisy and nasty theatrical techniques were meant to liberate the audience subconscious! If it is remembered that it was written between the world wars: ‘God has deserted us and the world is a violent and shocking place’, there will be more acceptance.
If not, no matter. It is a fun and challenging topic to offer teenagers which should get them to stretch their imaginations to breaking point. Brecht’s ‘making strange’, it isn’t. Neither is it Stanislavski’s Emotion Memory. Artaud is entirely unique, and that is what excites many KS4 drama students.
Further Reading and Ideas:
- Artaud Through Practice: A Teacher’s Handbook by Jeni Whittaker (2001)
- Ignite’s Jet of Blood (2009)
- Artaud for Beginners by Gabriela Stoppelman (2000). Writers and Readers Ltd.
- Watchfiends & Rack Screams, Artaud’s Final Works (1995), Exact Change, Boston.
- Death as a Secondary Drama Teaching Tool
David Porter - Member of Parliament (1987-97), district councillor, party political organiser, former teacher of drama and now retired Head of Performing ...
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