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Essay Subject: Examines Jean Genet's play in terms of "theatre of cruelty" proposed by Antonin Artaud.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines Jean Genet's play in terms of "theatre of cruelty" proposed by Antonin Artaud. Paper Introduction: In The Theatre and Its Double Antonin Artaud proposed a 'theater of cruelty' in which "violent physical images pulverise, mesmerise the audience's sensibility, caught in the drama as if in a vortex of higher forces" (63). He held that a new kind of play was needed, one that would depart from the standard word-based, dialogue-bound plays that had dominated Western theater for many centuries. In place of this type of play Artaud suggested a theater in which the specifically theatrical elements of a play's presentation--visual, aural, spatial, as opposed to mere lines of dialogue--be given the primary role. He held that incantation, ritual, exaggeration and fresh combinations of effects would provide the surprise and shock that would generate a visceral reaction in audiences for whom the spectacle would be meaningful as traditional plays no longer were. Artaud seldom Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The old theater of psychologicalplots merely gratified people's desire to be entertained by the spectacleof someone else's problems and did nothing, in Artaud's opinion, to makethe audience feel the cruelty of the world. He was annoyed at being misunderstood inhis use of the word 'cruelty' and specified that this did not mean "blood"and had "nothing to do with the cruelty we practice on one another" buttheater that is "difficult and cruel" and acknowledges the fact, as he sawit, that "we are not free and the sky can still fall on out heads [and]theater is made to teach us this" (6 ). Artaud seldom had the opportunity to put his own theoriesinto practice. When the game is interrupted the sisters aredisappointed because they have not gotten as far as they wished in itsapparently highly ritualistic performance. New York: Grove, 1962.Sartre, Jean-Paul. In so doing, and in posting aplacard that proclaimed the sex of the actors to the audience as Genet alsosuggested, the production would offer "the effort, at times admirable andat times grotesque, of a youthful male body struggling against nature" andwould, with the additional help of the warning notice, keep the audienceinvolved in the struggle against their own nature, i.e., their desire toaccept as theatrically 'real' whatever is presented to them on the stage(9). ButArtaud took the Balinese theater as a partial model for this kind ofspectacle and in his discussion of some of its specific means he provides acontext for this wild array of theatrical possibilities that clarifies thekind of integral production and manipulation of means he was seeking. In The Theatre and Its Double Antonin Artaud proposed a 'theater ofcruelty' in which "violent physical images pulverise, mesmerise theaudience's sensibility, caught in the drama as if in a vortex of higherforces" (63). You have your flowers, I my sink" (46). . The fullpower of theater had never been tapped by Western tradition and needed tobe released by dramatists who could allow it to run freely over thelimitations of habits and means that had been set in stone in the oldtraditions. Montreuil: 1993.Genet, Jean. Trans. Victor Corti. The Maids. He held thatincantation, ritual, exaggeration and fresh combinations of effects wouldprovide the surprise and shock that would generate a visceral reaction inaudiences for whom the spectacle would be meaningful as traditional playsno longer were. New York: Grove, 1962. Among the types of plays he couldimagine being presented by the theater of cruelty were "a very free poeticplay by Paul Lйon-Paul Fargue", a presentation of the story of Bluebeard,"reconstructed from historical records", and some Romantic melodramas inwhich "the unbelievable will be an active, tangible, poetic factor" (77-78). Trans. Trans. There is littlein such concepts that would be of use to anyone putting on The Maids. When Madame returns unexpectedly and they make the attempt to poisonher--out of fear that their plot against Monsieur will be revealed--theaction is, however, every bit as ritualized as their performance had been.Madame's treatment of the maids is a combination of indifferent kindness,suppressed loathing, and self-involvement that is not very much differentfrom 'Madame' as she had been enacted by Claire. This istheater that rejects the Western tradition, consists of ritual, de-realizesacting, and offers "violent physical images [that] pulverise [and]mesmerise the audience's sensibility", just as Artaud hoped (63). Asian theatrical experiences possessed, Artaud claimed, a"metaphysics of gesture" that has eluded Western drama because "our purelyverbal theatre [is] unaware of the sum total of theatre, of everything thatexists spatially on the boards or is measured and circumscribed in space"(38). To my belching sink. 1947. As Solange sadly notes, "Thesame thing happens every time . In appealing more directly to the senses and shaking uppreconceptions the theater of cruelty would not only make audiencesunderstand the nature of the world and themselves, however, it would also,in making the audience experience the terrible feelings presented, abjurethe violence and hatred that, otherwise, simmered beneath the surface andburst out in terrifying episodes--exemplified by the recent World War. And, while Artaudproposed various kinds of plays that were not traditional in form he didnot entirely reject scripted dialogue. Genet directed that the tones of Madame, as she laments over theglove in the opening scene, be "exaggeratedly tragic" and frequentlyinjected stage directions which indicate the highly stylized form in whichthe ritual should be enacted (35). you're never ready. But even in this the identities of the playersare further removed from reality because Solange plays 'Claire' to Claire's'Madame'. Hespecifies, for example, "no decor" in the traditional sense (76), the useof "puppets, huge masks, [and] objects of strange proportions [that] appearby the same right as verbal imagery", the discarding of "all objectsrequiring a stereotyped physical representation", the avoidance of moderndress, productions that use all four sides of the theater, a great deal ofmusic, and "oscillating light effects, new ways of diffusing lighting inwaves, sheet lighting like a flight of fire arrows" (74). The fury of thecharacters toward Madame and the effective suicide (execution of Solange)_of the maids have, therefore, precisely the kind of "pointlessness" thatallows "these acts of stage feeling [to] appear as something infinitelymore valid than those feelings worked out in real life" (16). In the essays included in The Theatre and Its Double Artaud movesfrom the general to the particular--from the metaphor of plague tosuggestions about staging, lighting, and the kinds of texts to be presentedin the theater of cruelty. Bernard Frechtman. He did not, therefore, call for a complete rejection of any verbaltext, or improvisation, in favor of Balinese-style mime and gesture.Instead it is clear that he intended new kinds of texts to be combined withwhatever could be taken from the suggestive Asian forms of theater of whichhe spoke. Her two maids are alive: they've just risen up,free, from Madame's icy form" (1 ). This self-control of the actor breaks down in thesuicide/murder of Claire, who is an actor within the play, because thesupposed goal, the death of Madame, cannot be achieved. This is a theater that rejects the old by placing new emphasis onthose aspects of the old that had been neglected. Introduction. They see the welling up of hatred and the desire to commitmurder and this creates a situation in which, according to Artaud, theactor, having engaged himself in the fury of the moment, needs greatercontrol and "virtue" to keep himself from committing the crime than thecriminal needs to actually commit the act. It is not aconventional play in terms of its dialogue or acting and is only marginallyrealistic insofar as its realistic setting is inhabited, for most of theplay, by people who are acting roles within the roles they are playing.The play centers around the ritual performances in which the two maid,Solange and her younger sister Claire, take turns playing 'Madame' theiremployer. Theplay thus reveals the kind of violence and hatred that simmers beneath thesurface and brings it out in ritual of the sisters. In doing so theater action "is as beneficial as the plague,impelling us to see ourselves as we are, making the masks fall anddivulging our world's lies, aimlessness, meanness, and ever two-facedness"(22). Works CitedArtaud, Antonin. The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Plays by Jean Genet. Many of the specific examples he cites wouldnot, of course, lend themselves to a production of The Maids. He believed firmly that theater, like the plague which reorders allhuman priorities in the panic over the imminence of death, has the power to"unravel conflicts, liberate powers, release potential" (21). Genet's play, therefore, offers the kind of visceral event in whichthe audience is forced to experience the horrors of existence, which areusually suppressed, by the maids' acting out of the depth of loathing anddisgust that lies behind the class distinctions they take, more or less,for granted. Bernard Frechtman. I'm pale and I'm about to die" (94). The Theatre and Its Double. . There is no aspect of the play,however, that subsides into simple realism as the action and style ofdialogue range from the exaggerations of the ritual, to the falseness ofMadame's tragic view of herself and her artificial benevolence toward themaids, to the madness of Solange's final monologues. I'mbeing acclaimed. A performance of this ritual opens the play but despite a fewhints (such as 'Claire's' arguing with 'Madame' over her choice of dress)it is not apparent to the audience that the scene involves anything but amistress and servant. But Claire is aliveand only dies after, at 'Madame's' request, Solange/'Claire' gives her thepoisoned tea as the ritual reaches its long-desired climax by becoming'real' in the sense that 'Madame' dies even though Madame is still alive.Solange continues to feel elevated by her 'crime' and speaks of the freedomthey have achieved in almost sacramental or religious terms, proclaimingthat "Madame is dead. The sisters never reach the point in their performance wherethey manage to perform the ritual murder of Madame that will give them thecourage to carry out the real murder. The audience, however iscued to look for the signs of this loathing in Madame by the performance ofthe ritual in which it has been exaggerated verbally by the sisters. In the course of the ritual 'Madame' heaps abuse on the sisterplaying the role of maid. But subsequent playwrights and directors often took theaterin directions that, if not directly influenced by Artaud, could accommodatehis vision--at least in part. This disgustis brought out vividly by Solange as she plays 'Claire", she speaks ofgoing back to her kitchen "and the smell of my teeth. In place of this type ofplay Artaud suggested a theater in which the specifically theatricalelements of a play's presentation--visual, aural, spatial, as opposed tomere lines of dialogue--be given the primary role. The eventual suicide of Claire, enacting the role of 'Madame' onceagain, leaves Solange in the position of the murderer who feels ennobled byher crime. But the anger accumulated bythe actor "has assumed a form that denies itself progressively as it isreleased, merging with universality" (16). I can't finish youoff" (46). One such play is Jean Genet's The Maids inwhich ritual, violence, anger, and multiple layers of self-referentialtheatricality create a spectacle that is every bit as antirealist,unconventionally themed, violent, and theatrical as a play with a modestcast, a realistic setting, and a somewhat conventional structure could be.A discussion of Artaud's ideas for the theater will concentrate on thoseaspects of his thinking that apply most directly--whether in theoretical orpractical terms--to Genet's play which, in many respects, already containsthe essence of some of Artaud's most significant ideas. In The Maids the playwright hasit both ways. He held that a new kind of play was needed, one that woulddepart from the standard word-based, dialogue-bound plays that haddominated Western theater for many centuries. Genet suggested thatthe artificiality should also be increased by the use of teenaged boys toplay the roles of the women which, as Sartre noted, would make the "de-realizing" even more radical since the actor playing Solange would be a boypretending to be a woman pretending to be a character named Solange who waspretending to be her sister Claire (8). The difference is thelayer of disgust (self-disgust and Madame's unexpressed loathing) towardthe servants that is fully expressed in the play. Artaud was struck by the Balinese theater's use of stylized mime andcoordinated movement by troops of performers and his pleasure derived, hesaid, from "the use these actors make of an exact amount of assuredgesture, tried and tested mime coming in at an appointed place, butparticularly in the mental clothing, in the deep shaded study which governsthe formulation of the expressive interplay of these expressive signs" (37-38). The setting--abeautiful bedroom overflowing with flowers selected by the maid--contrastsseverely with the never-seen, mysterious region of the kitchen that thesisters see themselves as inhabiting like subhuman creatures. But the effect the theater of cruelty was to have on the audience isone of Artaud's principal points. Even though most of Artaud's specific suggestions about staging haveno relevance to The Maids, Genet's play does, as Artaud proposed, "givewords something of the significance they have in dreams" (72). At the point where the audience thinks she may have killedClaire offstage Solange performs a long dreamlike monologue in which shedescribes her elevation as a murderer: "the hangman's lulling me. The act of the murderer hasended in a crime and his anger is released. The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Plays by Jean Genet (7-31). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.