Artaud - Importance of Sound

Thursday 26th November

Continuing our work with Artaud's ideas around Total Theatre, we begain to explore the use of sound within Theatre and Artaud's "assult of the senses", alongside use of foreign languages, with our own interpretations.

We began to explore the idea of taking the audience on an imaginary journey in order to create audience participation within theatre. For this, we got into pairs and took turns to guide our partner (who was blindfolded) through a journey which we created, explaining to them all the thoughts and feelings that they would be experiencing. The journey which I created was one involving a beach walk and I included the sound of the sea, feel of the sand and green rocks etc. My partner Kitty took me on an imaginary journey through history, as a soldier and general, fighting in legendary battles and crawling through trenches. This for me was an incredible experience, how the loss of sight, can lead you into believing that you are somewhere completely different, and also proved a good way to control and manipulate your audience.

In order to investigate the importance of sound within Total Theatre, we then grouped into 4's and were given a choice of different props that could be used to create a sound-scape. Our group chose to create a sound scape for a battle scene, using various objects, such as blowing into bottles as horns, using stilts to bang against the floor as a march etc etc. The audience were placed into a circle, blindfolded and back to back, we then stood around them in a circle while performing to add to the atmosphere. We were then able to take part in the other groups Total Theatre experience, in which a stormy, raining soundscape was created.

Through producing and being an audience member within these sound scapes, I began to understand that senses do work in the way people say; that if you loose one, others become stronger. In other words, as we had lost our sight, from descriptions and soundscapes, we were able to create our own visual picture with our imaginations of the scenes being created.

Artaud - The Theories

Friday 20th November

Today's lecture involved, completing our group language interpretation pieces, and a more detailed look into the works of Artaud, as shown in the Theories and Artaud handouts below.

Artaud: The Theories:

Antonin Artaud:

Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty

Monday 16th November

Today was our first introduction to the works of Antonin Artaud, and his theatre of cruelty. Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty is very much based on the idea that actors should be pushed to their limits, in order to expose a truth to the audience that they don't want to see. Artaud disagreed with the way that theatre was being "taken over" by text and speech and so opted for a more physical theatre use of language and gesture.

Arteud was also fascinated by the idea of his so called Total Theatre, a theatre which insults the senses, whilst playing with perception. He believed that theatre should challenge the audience and encourage audience involvement, rather than being a passive experience.

For our introduction to the meaning behind Artaud's idea of pushing his actors to the limits, we took part in an activity involving complete focus. In this activity we paced around the space, aiming to reach a personal goal in our minds, and the only way to reach this goal was by pacing. We could only pace in straight lines taking 90 degree turns with complete control.

I found that during this activity my body went into a sort of "auto-pilot" where my thoughts were fixed on reaching this goal. We spent over 30 minutes on this activity and after which I felt quite exhausted, both physically and mentally. Obviously this was nothing compared to the limits which Artaud would push his actors in order to create the horrors that he wanted to shock and control the audience with.