Theatre of Cruelty

The easiest and shortest explanation of "Theatre of Cruelty" is that it doesn't, in the end, give you what you want, what you have come to expect. It's cruel like that. It sets up certain expectations, certain logic, but does not follow through in familiar fashion. It changes the logic, once, twice or more and you the spectator are forced to view and contemplate things finally in ways you did not want to. The ideas behind Theatre of Cruelty do not, as some assume (or perhaps hope), imply whips and chains. Nor is it waterboard torture being done on stage. It's more like the lover you want, who teases you endlessly, arouses you in ways you never dreamed possible, but when the clothes come off is everything you don't expect, everything you don't want, and everything that makes you want to run and say you were never there to begin with. And heaven forbid your friends find out! That's what theatre of cruelty is like. Or is supposed to be like.

Theatre of Cruelty, the term and the popularity of it was set in motion by Antoine Artaud from a long treatise he wrote on the subject. It's not recommended reading. It may lose something in translation, as in something big, something understandable, but it is very difficult none-the-less to read from beginning to end, even for someone like me who half lives for these types of things. It takes a saintly patience to read it. Its only rival that I know of would be "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." (I want back those two hours or so btw that I spent on that book!).

Call Artaud crazy or whatever and nevermind the fact that he doesn't have, never had, any real production work to illuminate what he wrote. There is still an importance, an influence to what he wrote. And whether we refer to it by that catchy phrase, theatre of cruelty, or not, the premise behind it and its ways and effects when actualized on stage are important lessons every actor and director should take to heart, or at least take note of. I would be the first to criticize my own work and the work of others if or when it falls into the dreariness of a single line of action at any given moment, beginning to end, with a single flow of logic based on the simplicity of crossing every t and dotting every i. And lord knows it happens on a regular basis, scene by scene, act by act, play by play. As a spectator, when that is happening, when that is what you are experiencing, the only thing left for you is to hope that it is somehow "good." "Well, the acting was good." "That actress was good in that part." "The lighting was good." Or, "That wasn't so good how they did that." In other words, you are simply judging the execution of the intended logic of the action. "Well, seems to me like that character should have cried during that moment, real tears." "No, I don't think so, real tears have to be earned. She didn't earn them." "Well to me it wasn't believable because she didn't cry." "Well, it was believable to me. I don't cry in those situations either." "That's because you have a repressed personality."

Surprisingly enough, those single action at a time based on single logic, cross every t and dot every i productions are facilitated and encouraged in the name of clarity and communication. The problem is they fall over the edge into a kind of pedantic illustration of human intentions and behaviors. Show and tell kind of. "You are showing me you are going to drink the orange juice, oh now you are drinking the orange juice, oh now you are telling me you drank the orange juice. That was good! As a spectator I could see you wanted to drink the orange juice, and then I saw you actually drink it, and afterward I could hear how much you liked it."

Face it, as a director and a spectator, we, you, know that you are waiting for the actors to learn their lines, and trying to figure out just how everyone will move around the stage, and you want it to be "good" or interesting, and you want everyone to know that the material (meaning the subject matter and the story of the written script) is "important" and you want them to know why and how its "important," and of course you can't forget to tell them its funny too, don't forget its funny, and so you are busy thinking of all this stuff and of course you end up reducing everything to a single simple line of pedantic action for those very reasons. We are all guilty. And that is where a little Artaud (you thought I was gonna say Stanislavsky) comes in.

The modern master of introducing multiple streams of logic, of breaking, interrupting, changing or adding to the perceptions of the spectator, is Eugenio Barba at the Odin Teatret. Being a spectator to their productions is at first disconcerting because everything is "theatrical." Read theatrical as "provoking." I don't mean big or grand or "out there." I mean genuinely theatrical as in the sense it makes you go "wow" or "that is so clever" or "that surprised the hell out of me" or "gave me chills" etc. What you are experiencing as a spectator is that you are discovering new contexts. You are seeing and contemplating things in unusual or different ways and they seem to change often right before your eyes. There is a real sense of wonderment and what comes next. Simple actions hold this sway over you at their productions. Simple, simple actions executed in particular time.

Barba by the way is a fan of the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr. "Is an electron a wave?" "Yes" says Bohr, "if you are looking through a a wave-measuring apparatus." "Is an electron a wave?" "No" says Bohr, "if you look through a particle-measuring device."

Its a fun topic... and here is hoping you have a little cruelty happening in your next theatre going experience.