The Theatre of Cruelty (French: Théâtre de la Cruauté) is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds." By "cruelty," Artaud referred not to sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, austere, physical determination to shatter the false reality that, he wrote, "lies like a shroud over our perceptions."
Famous quotes containing the words theatre of, theatre and/or cruelty:
“This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God’s righteous Kingdom.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious,
Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes
Did scowl on gentle Richard.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving these necessities.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)