Theater Log Book Term 3

Today, we created several experiments which were related to the Antonin Artaud's 'Theater of Cruelty' theory.
Firstly, in groups we were given all given sheets that had a public place in which the norms of that place could easily be broken.
My group was given a library as our setting, and we listed several ways in which the norms of that place could be broken, some of which were: eating & drinking, playing loud music, talking loudly, vandalizing and so on.
Therefore, another group pretended to be ordinary people in a library, and my group was to come and go against every law of the facility. We performed by pretending to eat, drink, talk loudly and vandalize. 
From my own experience I found this quite fun and interesting, as I found it appealing to me how the audience reacted. I discovered that the other group taking part in our role play seemed uncomfortable so some of them just laughed out of role, and also the audience found it quite funny. In relation to the 'Theater of Cruelty', I can see this being something that Antonin Artaud would use in one of his performances, as he liked to make the audience feel slightly uncomfortable, implying that they are also part of the performance (breaking down the 4th wall). Additionally, Artaud did also like comedy, and considering our audience found our role play of breaking the norms quite comedic, I think that this would be a good way of showing our knowledge of Antonin Artaud's preferences for our future performance.
Next, we then did an exercise where we do free writing, which is where we just write anything down that comes straight to our mind first without thinking. The pen is just writing whatever it feels! In different groups we then chose one of those words and we acted it out using just sounds and physicality. From doing this I learnt that I can communicate a word/phrase to an audience without literally speaking. Artaud believed that actions and sounds spoke louder than words, and that words was often so misused in the wrong way, loosing their true meaning.
We then thought of taboo issues that aren't often discussed in the world and we had to put this topic into role play, my group's topic was on child abuse and abusive relationships.   
Afterwards, we then went into different groups and did an Artaud themed experiment on the whole class. We were all to sit tightly packed together in pitch darkness, whilst a group would then have to make sounds which represented their character in their taboo topic role play. From being part of this experiment I found it quite scary as I relied totally on my senses which at the time was hearing. Antonin Artaud enjoyed the thought of the audience using their senses, as it triggered a different sort of reliability on our senses, rather than relying on vision which we are used to using every day. When my group went to switch roles, I found it really fun being the sound maker, expressing the way my character in the role play may have felt. I imagined my character felt angry wanting to escape her abusive relationship, therefore I did a growling sound which shocked and scared the audience. This use of catharsis got the audience feeling terror and fear, therefore I learnt that this experiment that we tried out would be a good way of portraying the 'Theater of Cruelty' theory during our future performance.