Cage credited this close reading as the impetus for Theater Piece No.1, a 1951 performance art event regarded as the first Happening. :35 Prior to beginning the translation, Richards had collaborated in a close reading of the text with John Cage and David Tudor at Black Mountain College. Richards encountered Artaud's name in Jean-Louis Barrault's memoir Reflections on the Theatre (1951). Richards and published by Grove Press in 1958. The first English edition of The Theatre and Its Double was translated by M.C. Īrtaud expressed the importance of recovering "the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought". In No More Masterpieces, Artaud attacks what he believed to be the elitism of an irrelevant, outdated literary/theatrical canon. Themes Īrtaud intended his work as an attack on theatrical convention and the importance of language of drama, opposing the vitality of the viewer's sensual experience against theatre as a contrived literary form, and urgency of expression against complacency on the part of the audience. He was 'surprised and amazed' at how the treatment pinpointed 'with precision and remarkable accuracy the deep, debilitating and demoralizing troubles that have afflicted for so long', something he related to 'the "exteriorization" of "latent cruelty" causing the "organic disorder" (OC 4: 33) in plague-victims'. : 105Īrtaud developed the essay while undergoing acupuncture therapy.
Originally presented as a lecture at the Sorbonne (6 April 1933), it was revised and published in NRF (no. Originally published as a sixteen-page booklet by Éditions Denoël (Fontenay-Au-Roses, 1933).
: 105 'Second Manifesto of The Theatre of Cruelty' (1932) Published in Spanish in the Buenos Aires-based magazine Sur (no. : 105 'Alchemist Theatre'/'El teatro alquemico' (1932) Originally presented as a lecture at the Sorbonne (). : 106 'Production and Metaphysics' (1932) Part 1 was published as 'The Balinese Theatre at the Colonial Exhibition' in NRF (no. :104 Chronological release 'On the Balinese Theatre' (1931) :51 He had been able to correct the text's proofs between his journeys to Ireland and Mexico. Artaud was in "a near catatonic state in the mental hospital of Sainte-Anne" in Paris when the book was finally published. :51 The books consists of Artaud's collected essays on theatre dating from the early thirties, many of which were published in Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). The Theatre and Its Double was originally published 1 February 1938 as part of Gallimard's Métamorpheses Collection in an edition limited to 400 copies. 1.1.5 'Second Manifesto of The Theatre of Cruelty' (1932)Ĭomposition and publication history.1.1.3 'Alchemist Theatre'/'El teatro alquemico' (1932).Providing a concrete space with its ‘concrete language, intended for the senses and independent of speech,’ (Artaud, p.37), Fox’s gestural theatre can shed additional light on theoretical approaches to mime. Pantomime, with its glory in excess, its incipient display of anti-establishmentarianism, its fluidity and emphasis on show, contributed to the development of American theatre as a dynamic form.
I argue that the theatrical language of Fox’s pantomime exhibits dramatic dimensions that appealed to the edgy rebellious urges of their audiences, the performances of the white-face clown articulating an awareness of cultural anxieties, responding to and participating in the formation of the social response to political agenda and debate. My discussion of pantomime founds itself on a critical engagement with the concept of a total theatre, of gestures, physicality, movement and the performance of a theatrical ‘language’ beyond words. The Theatre and Its Double is essential to assessing theatre’s response to theatricality, specifically in its awareness of non-verbal strategies. This article argues that, through specific stagings orchestrated in the pantomimist’s art, George Lafayette Fox demonstrates a consciousness of staging and of theatricality that presages the blatant theatricalities of twentieth-century theatre and theatre theory.