In today’s lesson, we looked at breaking taboos in terms of subject matter and in terms of conventions and staging.
When working with Artaud's theater ideology, it is very important to consider the staging and conventions as Antonin Artaud liked to stage his performances in such ways that included the audience.
As a class, we were asked to create a world where everything was exactly as someone wanted it to be, and in my group we created a world where there was a king who demanded everything to be done perfectly, otherwise if done wrongly the servants would be thrown into a cage.
Doing this exercise and seeing all the other ideas from the other groups allowed me to see how any world could be created. This sort of reminded me of Artaud's way of creating immersing and surrealist theater, because it was almost like we had created a world which could possibly only exist in dreams, mixed with some elements of reality.
Then, we did an exercise in pitch darkness which required us to all rely on just our senses. This is a very Artaud way of immersing the audience into performances, because at this point they can't see what they're doing and they are extremely vulnerable to the actors. In the middle of the circle that we'd created, there was a telephone, and with that telephone we each had to make a threatening phone call using either dialogue or even just sounds. From doing this exercise, I learnt that any specific type of atmosphere can be created even without visuals, but in fact the atmosphere can be built by just being in complete darkness. At this point I felt the atmosphere seemed quite scary and tense, and from my own knowledge of understanding, this is how Antonin Artaud would want his audience to feel. This use of catharsis to me is extremely effective because at the time I felt the way that I believe I was meant to feel, which made it much more interesting and immersing.
When working with Artaud's theater ideology, it is very important to consider the staging and conventions as Antonin Artaud liked to stage his performances in such ways that included the audience.
As a class, we were asked to create a world where everything was exactly as someone wanted it to be, and in my group we created a world where there was a king who demanded everything to be done perfectly, otherwise if done wrongly the servants would be thrown into a cage.
Doing this exercise and seeing all the other ideas from the other groups allowed me to see how any world could be created. This sort of reminded me of Artaud's way of creating immersing and surrealist theater, because it was almost like we had created a world which could possibly only exist in dreams, mixed with some elements of reality.
Then, we did an exercise in pitch darkness which required us to all rely on just our senses. This is a very Artaud way of immersing the audience into performances, because at this point they can't see what they're doing and they are extremely vulnerable to the actors. In the middle of the circle that we'd created, there was a telephone, and with that telephone we each had to make a threatening phone call using either dialogue or even just sounds. From doing this exercise, I learnt that any specific type of atmosphere can be created even without visuals, but in fact the atmosphere can be built by just being in complete darkness. At this point I felt the atmosphere seemed quite scary and tense, and from my own knowledge of understanding, this is how Antonin Artaud would want his audience to feel. This use of catharsis to me is extremely effective because at the time I felt the way that I believe I was meant to feel, which made it much more interesting and immersing.
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