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A true theatrical show is meant to be enjoyed live.
It seems trivial when you think about it, yet it is from this simple premise, from this motto worthy of monsieur Lapalisse, that one of the most important books of the 20th century was born.
When Artaud developed "The Theatre and its Double", almost all Western stages were lazily wallowing in the certainties of axioms deemed unassailable, in the comfort zone of worn-out procedures, in the waste of uncritical and weak inertia.
Of course, there had been the insights of Alfred Jarry, the new horizons outlined by Strindberg, Pirandello's metatheatrical inventions, and the shocks of the avant-garde - first Dadaism and then Surrealism - but all these sparks had not ignited the hearts of the professionals and had remained dead letters in the vast majority of cases.
Even in the 1930s, theater in the West was simply the attempt of a company (director and actors) to transpose as faithfully as possible a text written by others (playwright).
Essentially, it was the effort of slaves trying to serve their master, an effort that had in verbal communication (dialogues and monologues) the most binding yoke. Lights, music, scenery, stage space, costumes, even the gestures of the actors were all elements used as stage directions at best, and mere trappings at worst.
Artaud was not the first to try to break these dogmas, but he was the only one to precisely model the elements of his critique, integrating them organically into a discourse that touched all aspects of the Art of Theater making.
Weary of the superficial psychologism and the hollow mimicry of everyday reality that chained the scenes to sterile two-dimensional tableaux, Artaud sought to radically renew the very justification of theater, to turn the intentions, goals, and ethics of the craft inside out.
When talking about him, however, it's impossible to reduce it all to a deontological issue.
Artaud wanted to reconnect contemporary theater with the primordial elements that had decreed its birth millennia before. Theater had to return to being a bubbling crucible where what was melted and mixed were not the interests, passions, and loves of men, but rather gusts and jolts of ancestral Energies, which the actors on stage, with their collisions and contaminations, had to represent with pressing anarchy.
True pagan rituals that were to bring the Divine and Mystery back into everyday life. This is precisely the "Double" Artaud refers to: a metaphysical temptation to which, to be worthy of this name, Theater had to yield and abandon with all its might.
For this reason, to emphasize its ritual aspect, the theater had to be freed from any intermediaries that could inhibit it. The dictatorship of the text had to end, the oppressive figure of the playwright had to be eliminated, and every performance had to be conceived directly on the stage through the common work of directors and actors.
Artaud speaks of a Theatre of Cruelty where the term "cruelty" did not refer to a bloodthirsty or violent practice in a physical sense. This word was rather used in a philosophical sense and indicated an indomitable, iron, uncompromising will that the actors/directors-officiants had to impose primarily on themselves to create a representation-ceremony.
Based on the absolute rigor of Oriental shows - particularly those of Balinese theater - the care for every minute detail had to be manic, calibrated to the millimeter, and articulated words had to be cleansed of everyday aspects and reduced to one of the elements, and not even the most important one, of the overall language of the stage.
Lights, music, costumes, and everything previously considered accessory gained a new dimension with Artaud. Transfigured and elevated to the dignity of real disembodied characters, all these components rivaled in importance with the movements, body, and voice of the actors, contributing to the density of the scene that had to hit the sensory perception of the audience on multiple levels.
This revolution did not aim to take any prisoners, and even the physical space in which the performance would live was not spared. By eliminating the classic stage-audience separation, Artaud wanted the spectators to be placed in the center of the room, with the show surrounding them, whirling everywhere and overwhelming them like an orgiastic, oblique, and ever-evolving vortex.
The theater had to become something to be seen again in order to grasp its essence, a sharing of time and space that admitted no textual dilution.
Artaud was fully aware of the radical scope of his message, and that's why, not wanting to risk total rejection by the public and critics, he decided to stage "The Cenci" as a presentation work for his postulates. A transitional drama in which only some of the characteristics of the new Theatre of Cruelty were encrusted on a classical framework.
It was a resounding, scorching failure, totally unforeseen, and something broke in the heart and mind of our protagonist. From this point on, a new phase in Artaud's life begins: a story of schizophrenia, internments, and electroshock. The magician and prophet had closed himself off forever.
I don't know if it's true that time is a gentleman, but one thing is certain: "The Theatre and its Double" is still today the indispensable guiding star for anyone who tries or is interested in avant-gardes (whatever field they are in), a borderline between Art and Rite that pushes to the extreme limit the possibilities offered by Theater.
Many directors over the years will declare themselves disciples of Artaud, but how many really were? Few, very few, and among these "terrible workers" (to quote Rimbaud), Jerzy Grotowski is worth remembering, who went to the paradox of no longer considering performance in front of an audience necessary, hiding in the secret rooms of permanent laboratories the fruits of his conquests.
But that is another story.
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