Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exerci… - Antonin Artaud

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Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.

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About Antonin Artaud

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud (September 4, 1896 – March 8, 1948), better known as Antonin Artaud, was a French playwright, poet, actor and director.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud Artaud
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The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.

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