ARTAUD, ANTONIN

born Sept. 4, 1896, Marseille, France died March 4, 1948, Ivry-sur-Seine French dramatist, poet, actor, and theoretician of the Surrealist movement who attempted to replace the bourgeois classical theatre with his theatre of cruelty, a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself. Artaud's parents were partly Levantine Greek, and he was much affected by this background, especially in his fascination with mysticism. Lifelong mental disorders sent him repeatedly into asylums. He sent his Surrealist poetry L'Ombilic des limbes (1925; Umbilical Limbo) and Le Pse-nerfs (1925; Nerve Scales) to the influential critic Jacques Rivire, thus beginning their long correspondence. After studying acting in Paris, he made his debut in Aurlien Lugn-Po's Dadaist-Surrealist Thtre de l'Oeuvre. Artaud broke with the Surrealists when their leader, the poet Andr Breton, gave their allegiance to communism. Artaud, who believed the movement's strength was extrapolitical, joined another defecting Surrealist, the dramatist Roger Vitrac, in the short-lived Thtre Alfred Jarry. Artaud played Marat in Abel Gance's film Napolon (1927) and appeared as a friar in Carl Dreyer's classic film La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). Artaud's Manifeste du thtre de la cruaut (1932; Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty) and Le Thtre et son double (1938; The Theatre and Its Double) call for a communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world. Artaud's own works, less important than his theories, were failures. Les Cenci, performed in Paris in 1935, was an experiment too bold for its time. His vision, however, was a major influence on the Absurd theatre of Jean Genet, Eugne Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and others and on the entire movement away from the dominant role of language and rationalism in contemporary theatre. His other works include D'un voyage au pays des Tarahumaras (1955; Peyote Dance), a collection of texts written between 1936 and 1948 about his travels in Mexico, Van Gogh, le suicid de la socit (1947), and Hliogabale, ou l'anarchiste couronn (1934; Heliogabalus, or the Crowned Anarchist).