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ANTONIN ARTAUD
Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to
the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the
background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth-
and twenty-first-century performance.
Antonin Artaud was an active theatre-maker and theorist whose
ideas reshaped contemporary approaches to performance. This is the
first book to combine
• an overview of Artaud’s life with a focus on his work as an actor and
director;
• an analysis of his key theories, including the Theatre of Cruelty and
the double;
• a consideration of his work as a director at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry
and his production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play; and
• a series of practical exercises to develop an approach to theatre
based on Artaud’s key ideas.
As a first step towards critical understanding and as an initial exploration
before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance
Practitioners are unbeatable value for today’s student.
Blake Morris is an independent scholar and artist based in New
York City. He has lectured on theatre and performance at universities
in the United Kingdom, including the University of East London and
Goldsmiths, University of London.
ROUTLEDGE PERFORMANCE
PRACTITIONERS
Series editors: Franc Chamberlain and Bernadette Sweeney
‘Small, neat (handbag sized!) volumes; a good mix of theory and
practice, written in a refreshingly straightforward and informative
style . . . Routledge Performance Practitioners are good value, easy to carry
around, and contain all the key information on each practitioner – a
perfect choice for the student who wants to get a grip on the big names
in performance from the past hundred years.’ – Total Theatre
Routledge Performance Practitioners is an innovative series of introductory
handbooks on key figures in contemporary performance practice.
Each volume focuses on a theatre-maker who has transformed the
way we understand theatre and performance. The books are carefully
structured to enable the reader to gain a good grasp of the fundamen-
tal elements underpinning each practitioner’s work. They provide an
inspiring springboard for students on twentieth century, contemporary
theatre, and theatre history courses.
Now revised and reissued, these compact, well-illustrated and
clearly written books unravel the contribution of modern theatre’s
most charismatic innovators, through:
• personal biography
• explanation of key writings
• description of significant productions
• reproduction of practical exercises.
Volumes currently available in this series:
Robert Lepage by Aleksandar Saša Dundjerovic
Frantic Assembly by Mark Evans & Mark Smith
Jana Sanskriti by Ralph Yarrow
Antonin Artaud by Blake Morris
Roy Hart by Kevin Crawford and Bernadette Sweeney
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Performance-Practitioners/book-series/RPP
Artaud in 1926 (image courtesy of Agence de presse Meurisse and Gallica
Digital Library).
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Blake Morris
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informal business
© 2022 Blake Morris
The right of Blake Morris to be identied as author of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identication and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-02977-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-02979-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-01983-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429019838
Typeset in Perpetua
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of gures ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 1
Part I: Artaud Growing up (1896–1920) 2
Part II: Artaud in Paris (1920–1936) 6
Part III: Artaud Le Mômo – Mexico, Ireland and the
asylum years (1936–1948) 29
Conclusion 37
2 ARTAUD’S KEY WRITINGS 39
Historical context 41
The quest for a new language 44
The Theatre and Its Double (1938) 48
‘Theatre and the Plague’ (1934) 65
Conclusion 71
3 THE THÉÂTRE ALFRED JARRY (1926–1929) 75
Producing work at TAJ 77
Le Songe at
Théâtre de l’Avenue
80
viii CONTENTS
The mise-en-scène 84
Critical reception 96
The end of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry 98
Conclusion 99
4 PRACTICAL EXERCISES 103
Part 1: Acting exercises 105
Part 2: Developing an Artaudian
mise-en-scène
119
Element one – scenic décor and objects 128
Element two – lighting 128
Element three – sound 129
Element four – the actor’s movement 130
Combining the elements 130
Part 3: Staging a scenario 131
Glossary of names 137
Bibliography 147
Index 157
FIGURES
2.1 Lot and His Daughters (ca. 1520), anonymous, though often
attributed to Lucas van Leyden, oil on panel. 54
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As with any text, this book has not been a solitary effort but was built on
the research and with the support of a variety of people. I am particularly
grateful to Kimberly Jannarone, who first introduced me to the works
of Artaud and whose teaching and scholarship have been essential to
the development of my understanding of his work. Throughout this
process, she has been available to answer my questions and help me
untangle some of the trickier aspects of his writing. I am also indebted
to Erik Butler, who quickly responded to all my translation queries and
whose understanding of the nuances of translation have been essential
to my understanding of a difficult author’s work. I would be remiss
not to mention my friend Cleo Cameron, who tolerated my constant
discussions of Artaud over the time I spent writing this book and
provided fantastic feedback on early drafts. Finally, an immense thanks
to my editors, Franc Chamberlain and Bernadette Sweeney, whose
insightful feedback has undoubtedly strengthened this work and helped
me to fill gaps in my knowledge.
Antonin Artaud’s works are abbreviated throughout the text in the
following ways:
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COLLECTED WORKS
(CW1) Artaud, Antonin (1968) Collected Works Volume 1. Translated by
Victor Corti. London: Calder & Boyars.
(CW2) Artaud, Antonin (1971) Collected Works Volume 2. Translated by
Victor Corti. London: Calder & Boyars.
(CW3) Artaud, Antonin (1972) Collected Works Volume 3. Translated by
Alastair Hamilton London: Calder & Boyars.
THE THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE
(TD): Artaud, Antonin (2010) The Theatre and Its Double. Translated by
Victor Corti. Surrey: Alma Classics.
(TD Richards): Artaud, Antonin (1994) The Theatre and Its Double.
Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press.
OTHER WRITINGS
(SW) Artaud, Antonin (1976) Selected Writings. Translated by Helen
Weaver and edited by Susan Sontag. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.
(Artaud, 2019) Artaud, Antonin (2019) Artaud 1937 Apocalypse: Letters
from Ireland. Translated by Stephen Barber. Zürich: Diaphanes.
Translations of Charles Dullin Souvenirs et Notes de Travail d’un Acteur
are the author’s unless noted. Where possible, I have used translations
available in English.
1
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL
AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
Madman. Mystic. Poet. Prophet. Visionary. Artists, scholars and crit-
ics often use these words to describe Antonin Artaud, one of the most
influential figures of modern theatre (see, for example, Sontag, 1981;
Knapp, 1980; Lotringer, 2015; Eshleman, 2001). The terms actor, direc-
tor, theatre-maker and performance-practitioner are less often used. Artaud,
however, was an active practitioner throughout the 1920s and 1930s,
and his experience in the theatre was essential to the theories he devel-
oped. Challenging and enigmatic, Artaud’s work has had a profound
influence on the development of theatre and performance.
His lasting influence on the theatre is based on a series of essays, letters
and manifestos published in the 1930s that outlined his visions for a Thea-
tre of Cruelty, which were collected as Le Théâtre et son Double [The Theatre
and Its Double] (1938). Susan Sontag provides an indication of Artaud’s
influence in her introduction to his Selected Writings, written in 1973:
[H]e has had an impact so profound that the course of all recent serious theater
in Western Europe and the Americas can be said to divide into two period –
before Artaud and after Artaud. No one who works in the theater now is
untouched by the impact of Artaud’s specific ideas about the actor’s body and
voice, the use of music, the role of the written text, the interplay between the
space occupied by the spectacle and the audience’s space.
(SW, p. xxxviii)
DOI: 10.4324/978 0429019 838-1
2 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
Almost fifty years after Sontag’s conjecture, artists continue to draw on
Artaud’s ideas, with examples ranging from the immersive theatre of
British company Punchdrunk (2000–present) to seminal punk artist
Patti Smith’s recent recording The Peyote Dance (2019), created in col-
laboration with Soundwalk Collective based on Artaud’s writings about
Mexico.
Artaud has a reputation for theorising an impossible theatre with no
practical application (Goodall, 1994, p. 5; Finter, 1997). He insisted,
however, that his writings were a starting point for practice; he was
‘a man of the theatre’ (SW, p. 210), not simply a vulgar theoretician
(Gardner, 2003, p. 109). This book builds on that context, positioning
Artaud’s writings on theatre in relation to his work as a writer, actor,
director and producer.
PART I: ARTAUD GROWING UP
(1896–1920)
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud was born on 4 September 1896 to
Antoine Roi Artaud and Euphrasie Artaud (neé Nalpas). Artaud Senior
was a well-to-do shipping agent from Marseille who chartered trade
ships in the eastern Mediterranean; his mother was from the port of
Smyrna on the Aegean Sea (present-day Izmir, Turkey). With his father
often absent on business, Artaud’s mother was the family’s primary
caregiver. Known throughout his life as Antonin, a diminutive for
Antoine, Artaud grew up in Marseille and spent many of his childhood
summer holidays with his maternal grandmother in Smyrna.
Multiple biographers have noted the importance of Artaud’s early
childhood experiences and family life in the development of his work,
and particularly the work he created during and after his institutionali-
sation (Shafer, 2016; Stout, 1996). Some of the more influential aspects
of his early childhood include the following:
• His parents were first cousins, which resulted in a closely intercon-
nected extended family.
• The death of his siblings – only two of his eight siblings survived until
they were adults, Marie-Ange and Fernand. His sister Germaine’s
death at seven months of age, just before Artaud turned nine, was
particularly impactful (Shafer, 2016, p. 18).
• At the age of five, he was diagnosed with meningitis; his father
‘procured a static electricity-producing machine’ to administer
mild shock treatments, which was a common cure-all for a variety
of ailments at the time (ibid.).
• He suffered from an intermittent stammer and frequent headaches,
which persisted throughout the rest of his life (possibly related to
this early illness).
His experience of meningitis started a lifelong relationship with physical
ailments and neurological treatment. He would spend the majority of
his life in and out of various asylums, sanatoriums and clinics and would
undergo a more extreme form of electroconvulsive therapy towards
the end of his life, when he was institutionalised at Rodez from 1943
to 1946.
COLLÈGE SACRÉ-COEUR (1907–1914)
His deeply religious mother raised him in a Roman Catholic tradition,
and ‘the young Artaud devoutly prayed for several hours each day’
(Höpfl, 2005, p. 249); for a period of time, he even considered becom-
ing a priest. In 1907, at the age of nine, he began attending the Collège
Sacré-Coeur, a bourgeois parochial school where he remained a student
until he was eighteen. Two years earlier, France had passed a law estab-
lishing itself as a secular nation (Sherman, 1999, p. 74) and as David
Shafer, one of Artaud’s biographers, has noted, ‘to send a child to a
parochial school at the [time] was a strong statement on a family’s piety,
if not hostility to the secular values of the French Republic’ (Shafer,
2016, p. 22). Artaud theorised theatre as a religious, holy experience
(TD, p. 50), and the images he employed often reflected his Catholic
upbringing (TD, pp. 91–92).
It was at the Collège that Artaud first started writing poetry. The
poets that excited him were challenging conventions and creating new
forms, such as the American writer Edgar Allan Poe and the French
poets Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé. He began collab-
orating with his school classmates on a private literary journal around
the age of 14, where he would publish his first poems under the pseu-
donym Louis des Attides (Esslin, 1976, p. 1). In 1914, his final year at
school, he destroyed most of his written work and gave away his books
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 3
4 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
to his friends. In response to his noticeable psychological distress and
withdrawal from social life, his parents had a psychiatrist examine him.
According to his brother Fernand, the psychiatrist diagnosed
Artaud’s dislike of his parents as the primary problem (Shafer, 2016,
p. 25); Artaud biographer André Roumieux attributes it to a rejection
of his entire family unit, including his brother and sister whom he could
not stand (Roumieux, 1996, p. 17). Whatever the exact cause, Artaud
was admitted to La Rouguiere, a clinic near Montpellier, where he
began treatments under the supervision of the renowned doctor Joseph
Grasset in 1915 (Shafer, 2016, p. 25).
INTRODUCTION TO INSTITUTIONALISATION
(1915–1918)
Grasset was a leading professor at the University of Montpellier. His
recent publication, Thérapeutique des maladies du système nerveux [Therapy
for Ailments of the Nervous System] (1907), argued that nervous conditions
were often related to relations between blood relatives and ‘religious
excesses’, both of which Artaud exemplified (Shafer, 2016, p. 25). He
diagnosed Artaud with neurasthenia – a vague diagnosis that covered a
wide variety of nervous disorders associated with fatigue, irritability and
depression – and administered a mixture of treatments that included
hydrotherapy and mineral baths, as well as cocktails of narcotics and
stimulants. This was Artaud’s first exposure to opiates, to which he
would become increasingly dependent throughout his life.
His treatment was interrupted in 1916, when he was conscripted
into the French army to serve in World War I and stationed at a train-
ing camp in Digne, in south-eastern France. His service was brief.
Within five months of his induction he was released from duty due to
‘an unspecified health reason’ and fully discharged the following year
(Shafer, 2016, p. 26). Though morphine was a commonly prescribed
drug for wounded soldiers during the war (Kamieński, 2016, p. 83), it
is unclear if Artaud was able to receive the drugs he had been prescribed
in his treatment. He would later claim he was discharged due to his
sleepwalking, though his mother identified the reason as his nervous
condition (Shafer, 2016, p. 26).
Once again, his parents had him admitted to a series of sanatori-
ums to treat his nervous disorders, which were exacerbated by his
experience of the war. He was sent ‘to Saint-Dizier, near Lyons, to
Lafoux-les-Bains, to Divonne-les-Bains, and to Bagnères-de-Bigorre
before he spent two years at a Swiss clinic [Le Chanet] near Neuchâtel’
(Rowell, 1996, p. 18). At Le Chanet, where he was admitted in 1918,
he was under the supervision of Dr Maurice Dardel. Dardel encouraged
Artaud to write and draw as part of his treatment (Eshleman, 2001, p.
162). He also prescribed him morphine and laudanum, solidifying what
became Artaud’s lifelong addiction to opiates (ibid.).
Artaud’s chronic illnesses and resultant drug use affected his work
and relationships in various ways. His friend and collaborator Jean-
Louis Barrault reflected in his memoirs,
As long as [Artaud] kept his lucidity, he was fantastic. Royal. Prodigious in his
vision. Funny in his repartees. He was completely lubricated with humour. But
when, under the effect of drugs or illness, his escapades submerged him, the
machine began to creak and it was painful, wretched. One suffered for him.
(Barrault, 1974, p. 81)
Artaud always positioned himself as a patient in need of relief rather
than a drug abuser: ‘I understand prohibiting the sale to addicts, but
not to an unfortunate type like me who needs it so that he no longer
suffers’ (cited in Shafer, 2016, p. 43). Barrault corroborated this,
reflecting that Artaud’s drug use was primarily medical rather than an
exercise in expanding his consciousness: ‘from an early youth his bod-
ily sufferings were cruel. To mitigate them, he took drugs’ (Barrault,
1974, p. 83).
France did not implement a national social health insurance system
until 1945 (Chambaud and Hernández-Quevedo, 2018), which meant
that Artaud was often unable to access or afford appropriate drugs for
his treatments. At times, aware of his increasing dependence on opi-
ates, he would attempt to detoxify himself. During these periods, he
would have experienced opiate withdrawal, which is characterised by
physical symptoms ranging from aches and pains to excessive sweating,
diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting (Farrell, 1994). When one such period
of withdrawal occurred in 1924, he wrote to his friend and sometimes
financial sponsor Yvonne Allendy that he was suffering from ‘violent
gnawings’ and a ‘spinal column full of cracklings, painful at the top’
(cited in Shafer, 2016, p. 101). Noting that it had been ‘some weeks’
since he had ‘stopped using any drugs’, he declared his detoxification ‘a
waste of time’ (ibid.).
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 5
6 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
PART II: ARTAUD IN PARIS (1920–1936)
Dardel believed Artaud would benefit from a return to France and rec-
ommended he be placed under the supervision of Dr Édouard Toulouse.
Toulouse was a renowned French psychiatrist who was running an asylum
in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif as part of a major project reforming
asylum care in France. He had a long-standing interest in the arts, and
part of his research focused on the relationship between artistic genius and
psychiatric diagnoses (Eshleman, 2001, p. 162; Shafer, 2016, p. 31). In
1912, he had founded the art, science and culture journal Demain, which
‘aimed at promoting a fuller, more integrated life-style on the basis of a
fusion of scientific and “moral” thought’ (Esslin, 1976, p. 18).
Dardel specifically recommended Toulouse based on Artaud’s lit-
erary ambitions: he thought the ‘the more vibrant cultural life in Paris
and the guidance of Dr Toulouse would provide the patient with a ther-
apeutic artistic outlet’ (Shafer, 2016, p. 29). After assessing Artaud,
Toulouse decided to take him on as a boarder, believing his home would
be a more conducive environment to support Artaud’s creative and
artistic development than Villejuif (ibid., p. 33).
Artaud boarded with Toulouse and his wife Jeanne through the end of
1920 (Esslin, 1976, p. 19). During this time, Toulouse provided Artaud
with his first opportunities to write professionally. He contributed a
wide variety of writings to Demain, ranging from an improved curricu-
lum for the baccalaureate to reviews of art exhibitions and plays and was
made him managing editor of the journal in March 1920 (Rowell, 1996,
p. 159). Toulouse also helped him publish works in some of the leading
reviews of the day, including the in-house magazine for the Theatre de
l’Œuvre (Ho, 1997, pp. 13–14). This served as Artaud’s introduction to
the professional theatre world in Paris.
ARTAUD AND PARISIAN THEATRE
Artaud’s arrival in Paris coincided with a period of avant-garde exper-
imentation that expanded and reshaped French theatrical traditions.
Through the mid-nineteenth century, it was customary for authors to
direct their own texts. If the author was not available, a stage manager
was responsible for ensuring the text’s stage directions were followed
to the letter. When there was a director, it was generally an administra-
tive role: ‘the author, the actor and the scene painter were the artists of
the theatre realm’ (McCready, 2016, p. 2).
By the 1920s, however, the role of metteur-en-scène had gained
prominence in France through the pioneering work of André Antoine
at the naturalist Théâtre Libre (1887–1896). Antoine promoted the
‘“exciting but obscure work” of directing – “an art that [had] just been
born”’ (Jannarone, 2010, p. 138). This was followed by the innovative
work of Lugné-Poë at the Symbolist Théâtre de l’Œuvre (1893–1929),
the first director with whom Artaud would work. As Artaud devel-
oped his acting career, he continued to work with directors who were
actively pushing the boundaries of theatre. His exposure to and par-
ticipation in the cutting-edge theatre of the time shaped his practice in
important ways.
Metteur-en-scène
literally translates to ‘scene setter’ and refers to
the director of a production. The role of was first brought to promi-
nence by Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen in Germany (1826–1914),
a German aristocrat who, in 1886, established his own court theatre
troupe where he oversaw every aspect of the staging and production.
The role was not officially acknowledged in France until 1941 when
‘the Vichy regime created the Comité d’organisation des entreprises
du spectacle [Organizing Committee for the Entertainment Industry]
and first used the term’ (Jannarone, 2016, p. 107, n. 11).
During a failed attempt to sneak into a production at the Théâtre de
l’Œuvre, Artaud had a happenstance meeting with Lugné-Poë (Shafer,
2016, p. 37). Lugné-Poë and Toulouse were friendly, and Toulouse
initiated a formal introduction. This led to Artaud’s first volunteer roles
in a professional theatre as a prompter and stage manager (Murray,
2014, p. 61). He was also given his first opportunity to appear onstage,
in a non-speaking role in Henri de Régnier’s Les Scrupules de Sganarelle
[Sganarelle’s Scruples] (1921). In an assessment of Artaud’s work decades
later, Lugné-Poë ‘praised him for the originality of his make-up and the
elegance of his movement which made him appear as “a painter who had
strayed among actors”’ (cited in Esslin, 1976, p. 19).
In October 1921, his maternal uncle, Louis Nalpas, a French film
producer and the artistic director of the influential production com-
pany Société des cinéromans, arranged an audition with Firmin Gémier.
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 7
8 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
Gémier identified Artaud’s talent and referred him to Charles Dullin,
who had established a new theatre troupe, L’Atelier, earlier that year.
Dullin and Artaud were mutually impressed with each other upon
meeting, and Artaud accepted Dullin’s invitation to join the troupe.
ARTAUD AT L’ATELIER (1921–1923)
Dullin founded L’Atelier with the stated goal to ‘return to the great tradi-
tions of dramatic art’ and, from that ‘solid base’, discover ‘new forms in
keeping with the spirit of our times’ (cited in Whitton, 1987, p. 71). The
troupe consisted of five actors in addition to Artaud, and he was initially
enthusiastic about joining Dullin’s troupe. ‘[I]t is curious’, he wrote to
Yvonne Gilles, a young painter he had met in Paris, ‘that I with my tastes
have fallen into something so congenial to my own mentality’ (SW, p. 17).
Artaud described it as a ‘small group, something like L’Oeuvre or the
Vieux-Colombier but even more special, if possible’ (SW, p. 17). It was
both a theater and a school which applie[d] principles of instruction that were
invented by [Dullin] and whose purpose is to internalize the actor’s perfor-
mance. For in addition to the purification of the stage he is also interested in its
renovation or, more accurately, its total originality.
(SW, p. 17)
They relocated to Néronville, a town about 100 km south of Paris,
where they lived and trained communally, outside of the pressurised
environment of Paris. Dullin programmed an intense training regimen
of ‘ten to twelve hours a day’, which included gymnastics, concen-
tration exercises, improvisations, and voice training, with a focus on
diction and breath (Goodall, 1987, p. 119). This was the kind of thea-
tre Artaud wanted to create, one ‘conceived as the achievement of the
purest human desires’ rather than an entertainment to be attended for
‘momentary excitement’ (CW2, p. 130).
According to Artaud, the troupe was engaged in the ‘important
business of purifying and regenerating the customs and spirit of French
theatre’ (CW2, p. 128). Together they were ‘rediscovering old secrets
and a whole forgotten mystique of theatrical production’ (SW, p. 16).
Indeed, in Dullin’s vision for the theatre, one can see many of the ideas
that Artaud would continue to develop:
• Dullin considered theatre a ‘complete art, sufficient unto itself’
which needed to rediscover its specific power as a medium (cited
in Tian, 2018, p. 143).
• He was one of the original proponents in France of ‘a total theatre
in which gesture, mime, colour, music and movement would rival
dialogue in importance’ (Esslin, 1976, p. 20).
• He drew from East Asian performance techniques in his pursuit of
a new kind of Western theatre (Tian, 2018).
Dullin’s theatrical theories and techniques were foundational to
Artaud’s development as a practitioner, and the two years Artaud spent
as a member of the troupe represent his most rigorous actor training
(Deák, 1977; Jannarone, 2010, p. 145; Shafer, 2016, p. 39).
DULLIN’S TRAINING PROGRAMME
Dullin had a successful career on stage and approached his training from
an actor’s point of view. He brought an eclectic mix of techniques to his
training, including his work as an actor in melodrama, his movement
training with Jacques Copeau, and his early training with Antoine,
whose naturalist techniques informed his approach to conveying inner
worlds (Rose, 1983, p. 44).
The goal of his training programme, as he described it, was ‘to form
the complete actor’ (cited in Deák, 1977, p. 346). He wanted to
form actors with a general culture, which they so often lack; to inculcate them
from the very beginning with solid principles of actors’ techniques: good dic-
tion, physical training; to expand their means of expression to include dance
and pantomime.
(ibid.)
He combined a focus on breathing and diction – the first principle of
his technique élémentaire [elementary technique] was that actors should
‘know how to breathe well and at the same time acquire the science of
using one’s breath’ (cited in Gardner, 2003, p. 111) – with improvi-
sational exercises that looked to attune actors to their inner emotional
life, as well as the external stimuli of the world, including moral,
political, geographical and aesthetic concerns (Deák, 1977, p. 347).
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 9
10 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
He was an early innovator of improvisation in France, and his stu-
dents participated in two weekly courses on improvisational techniques.
Dullin recalled that ‘outside of the diction exercise which he ener-
getically resisted, [Artaud] was a diligent and receptive student’ who
‘adored [the] improvisational work to which he brought the imagination
of a poet’ (cited in Deák, 1977, p. 349). Artaud praised these tech-
niques as Dullin’s ‘most important method’ (CW2, p. 128). Dullin’s
improvisations ranged from simple exercises for the actor, such as imag-
ining they were crossing a mountain stream, to more complex improvi-
sational scenes that included multiple participants. He sometimes used
‘Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and theoretical writings on poetry’ to guide
the improvisation – works with which Artaud was intimately familiar
from his days at Collège (Barba, 1995, p. 152).
Barrault, who began studying at L’Atelier in 1931 and joined the troupe
the following year, reflected that the improvisations focused on connect-
ing the actors to their authentic selves. Dullin asked them ‘to feel before
expressing’ (Barrault, 1974, p. 55). Likewise, Artaud proclaimed that the
improvisations ‘force[d] the actor to think his actions through his soul,
instead of acting them’ (CW2, p. 128). In his own vision for the theatre,
Artaud would use improvisation both to strengthen the emotional athleti-
cism of the performer and as a way to devise theatrical work.
ARTAUD’S INTRODUCTION TO EAST
ASIAN THEATRE
Dullin was the first person to introduce Artaud to techniques from East
Asian performance traditions. Like Artaud, Dullin was first introduced
to these traditions as an actor. He appeared in two adaptations of Chi-
nese Yuan zaju plays, first in Antoine’s production of L’Avare Chinois
(1908), and again at Jacques Rouché’s Théâtre des Arts in Louis Laloy’s
Le Chagrin dans le palais de Han [Sorrow in the Han Palace] (1911).
Zaju was a form of Chinese variety play from the Song dynasty
(1127–1279) that became a mature dramatic form during the Yuan
dynasty (1279–1368). The Yuan zaju typically consisted of four acts,
with prologues or interludes and combined singing, dancing, acting
and mime. To avoid censorship, the stories were drawn from early
plays, popular legends or historical stories.
More influential was Dullin’s exposure to Japanese performance. In
a letter to his friend and fellow poet Max Jacob, Artaud noted that
the Japanese were their ‘masters’ and informed the troupe’s methods
(CW3, p. 93). Dullin would not actually witness an authentic Japanese
performance until 1930, when Tsutsui Tokujirō and his troupe came
to Paris, but his interest in it developed as early as 1916. Writing to
Copeau while serving in the army during World War I, he describes
participating in an impromptu performance in which ‘one of the “three
marvellous actors” integrated dance, speech and singing’ in a combina-
tion he declared to be ‘Japanese’ (cited in Tian, 2018, p. 134).
Dullin was inspired by ‘the principles of the old Japanese theatre’,
the origins and history of which strengthened his ‘ideas on a renewal
of theatrical performance’ (cited in Tian, 2018, p. 135). In 1921, two
important works on Japanese theatre were published in France, which
further expanded Dullin’s understanding of the form: Arthur Waley’s
The Nō Plays of Japan and Noel Peri’s Cinq Nô: Drames lyriques japonais
[Five Nō Dramas]. Both books contained descriptions of Japanese Nō thea-
tre, as well as examples of performance texts. His contemporaries were
inspired by these texts as well. For example, in 1924, Suzanne Bing
would use them to support her translation and production of Kantan
with students at Copeau’s Vieux-Colombier (Baldwin, 2016, p. 38).
For Dullin, Japanese actors’ ‘stylization [was] direct, eloquent, and
more expressive than reality itself’ (cited in Tian, 2018, p. 137). He was
particularly interested in Japanese actors’ non-naturalistic acting style,
their controlled physicality and work without props. Dullin attributed
this, in part, to their use of masks and marionettes, which heightened
attention to the expressive potential of the full body. In Chapters 2
and 3, we will see how Artaud builds on these ideas through his prac-
tice at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry (TAJ) and the writings published in The
Theatre and Its Double.
Artaud’s first live experience of East Asian performance was in
1922. Dullin’s troupe had been performing in the south of France, and
Artaud took the opportunity to visit his family in Marseille, which was
hosting the Exposition Internationale Coloniale de Marseille (1922). There,
he attended Cambodian and Vietnamese dance performances, includ-
ing what was considered the highlight of the event, King Sisowath’s
Cambodian Royal Ballet. While writing his seminal essay ‘Sur le Théâtre
Balinais’ [On the Balinese Theatre] (1932), he reflected on the Cam-
bodian ballet and ‘wondered if the final happiness is not comparable to
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 11
12 BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
the solution of this particular Nirvana’ (cited in Shafer, 2016, p. 41).
His experience of Balinese performance nearly a decade later would be
even more influential, but these early introductions, while a member
of Dullin’s company, were an essential foundation for his later practice
and the theories he developed.
PRODUCTIONS AT L’ATELIER
L’Atelier was situated in Montmartre, an artistic district on the outskirts
of Paris with a rough reputation. For Dullin, the theatre’s position
away from the Boulevard theatres signalled ‘the image of a different
repertoire, a different style of acting, a different audience’ (cited in
McCready, 2016, p. 36). The theatre, Montmartre’s oldest, was small
and under-equipped, ‘with a cramped, almost circular stage’ (Whitton,
1987, p. 78; Hewitt, 2017, p. 107). Echoing Copeau’s concept of le
tréteau nu, Dullin declared, ‘the most beautiful theatre in the world is a
masterpiece on bare boards’ (cited in Whitton, 1987, p. 76). His inten-
tion was to create a theatre that was accessible to the public, and adver-
tisements boasted it was ‘the most affordable theatre in Paris’ (cited in
McCready, 2016, p. 36).
Dullin exposed Artaud to a wide range of plays, both classic and con-
temporary, French and foreign. He performed eleven roles through-
out his time in the company, including Tiresias in the much-lauded
première of Jean Cocteau’s Antigone (1922), which had sets by Pablo
Picasso, costumes by Coco Chanel and music by Arthur Honegger
(Esslin, 1976, p. 22). Critics praised his performance as Basilio, King
of Poland, in Calderón de la Barca’s La vie est un songe [Life Is a Dream]
(1922) – a role that Artaud considered to be ‘of tremendous range’
(SW, p. 18). One contemporary reviewer highlighted his deft handling
of a challenging monologue in the second act, which he performed in a
way that was ‘incomparably simple and marvellously royal’ (Larrouy,
1997, pp. 19–20). The reviewer noted that Artaud’s ‘discreet inflec-
tions’ and ‘subtle gestures [. . .] singularly emphasized the majesty of
his character’ (ibid.).
One of Artaud’s most praised performances was in the role of the
marionette Pedro Urdemales in Jacinto Grau’s Monsieur de Pygmalion
(1923). Urdemales is an archetypal rouge or trickster character from
Latin American literature, and Dullin considered Artaud’s performance
a ‘great personal success’, which was the ‘incarnation of the spirit of
evil’ (cited in Rose, 1983, p. 54). Various reviewers likened Artaud’s
highly physical performance to ‘a bolshevist jumping jack’ and ‘mon-
key-like rustling’, while Lugné-Poë identified him as Dullin’s ‘finest
collaborator’ in a fine production (ibid.).
In addition to acting, Artaud was a talented draughtsman, and Dullin
enlisted him to contribute technical designs for several productions
(Esslin, 1976, p. 20). He designed the scenery for the Spanish Golden
Age drama L’Hôtellerie [The Hotel] (1922) and the costumes and scenery
for Lope de Rueda’s Les Olives [The Olives] (1922), Alexandre Arnoux’s
Moriana et Galvan [Moriana and Galvan] (1922) and Calderón de la Barca’s
La vie est un songe (1922). This provided Artaud with practical design
experience with a director who wanted to bring together every aspect
of the mise-en-scène to create a total theatrical experience.
Mise-en-scène
translates literally to ‘putting on stage’ and refers to
all the elements of staging. This includes the lighting design, sound
design, décor, props, costumes, the movement, characterisation and
speech of the actors, the audience and the way they all interrelate.
ARTAUD’S BREAK WITH L’ATELIER
Artaud often pushed his performances to extremes that did not align
with Dullin’s overall vision. Known for the outlandish make-up he wore
for performance and his particularly gestural acting style, he ‘began to
annoy Dullin by insisting on more and more bizarre interpretation of
his parts’ (Esslin, 1976, p. 21). For example, while performing as a
businessman in Luigi Pirandello’s La Volupté de l’honneur [Pleasure of Hon-
esty] (1922), Artaud appeared on stage wearing highly stylised make-up
of his own design, based on masks from Chinese performance. It was
standard at the time for actors to apply their own make-up; however,
Dullin stated that this ‘symbolic makeup’ was ‘just slightly out of place
in a modern play’ (cited in Pronko, 1967, p. 9).
The final break between them came during a production of Arnoux’s
Huon de Bordeaux [Huon of Bordeaux] (1923), in which Artaud was to
play Emperor Charlemagne. Artaud considered it the first time he had
‘found a role adapted to [his] skills’ (cited in Shafer, 2016, p. 44) and,
despite his increased misgivings regarding Dullin’s theatrical vision, was
BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT 13
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