Artaud!!!!

Ron Weiss

Artaud readings response

Directing Theory

8/29/23

I think the most exciting thing about this reading for me was how spectacular the theater is made out to be by Artaud. He describes giving the audience “precipitates of dreams.”

YES

I like to make things that feel unreal, that bend the laws of physics and our world. Artaud is letting me know that my goal won’t be reached by relying solely on the text as god. If I want to create things that feel dream-like and metaphysical, giving the text similar weight to what it would have in a dream may be a good place to start.

I have been picking a lot of material recently, and I think my biggest struggle has been trying to pick a material that will “work well when I fuck with it.” What I am trying to allow myself to sink into is the fact that EVERY TEXT will work well when I fuck with it. I keep getting scared because I quite literally can’t imagine what the piece will look like when I am through with it, but that doesn’t mean it won't work! It just means I need to sit down and analyze it. When I am starting with this text base I need to understand what it is saying before I can imagine it together. Artaud mentions the text in the mise en scene as “the point of departure for theatrical creation.” It’s what we have been talking about for more than a year now, I want to allow myself to jump into texts without knowing where it will take me.

In The Theatre and its Double Artaud continues to explain how the theater as a language is meant to satisfy the senses first and foremost, and we are missing out if we do this simply with words. I like the way he thinks about theater as the substitute for poetry of language. He calls theater a poetry of space.

“To make metaphysics out of a spoken language is to make the language express what it does not ordinarily express…to reveal its possibilities for producing physical shock; to divide and distribute it actively in space…” this imagery is so active, and it is so broad. Even with all the training we have had on how to play with text and after I have literally done it, every time it seems so daunting and unachievable! I keep looking for the text that will say “by the way, if you want to have a cool use of space, put this text in this place with these things!” But that isn’t even breaking the text!! I am going to pick a scene now for our contemporary staging installation even though I don’t know how it will look. It’s time to just jump in and allow myself to figure it out with the text work.