Artaud believed that theatre should affect the audience as much as possible, therefore he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements.
The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid
Artaud wanted to put the audience in the middle of the 'spectacle' (his term for the play), so they would be 'engulfed and physically affected by it'. He referred to this layout as being like a 'vortex' - a constantly shifting shape - 'to be trapped.
He also theorized that without cruelty within the theatre then the element/atmosphere would be powerless and useless. He then reported that all plots should have some sense of cruelty in the storyline. Artaud wanted to erase all aspects of false reality with the element of cruelty.
Artaud thought that society and the world of theatre had become an “empty shell”. In the Theatre of Cruelty, he was trying to revolutionize theatre - figuratively burn it to the ground so that it could start again. He was trying to connect people with something more primal, honest and true within themselves that had been lost for most people.
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