I disagree with a lot of Artaud’s big assumptions and vague imperatives. he believes that the theatre has lost something inherent and pure about it that can be recovered only through diligence and theoretical austerity. Artaud is also an Orientalist through and through, writing glowingly of Indonesian theater as though it is a pure, undiluted, “primal” theater from which the West can and should learn. note, too, his frequent use of the term “hieroglyphic” as an adjective describing physical stylization, a clear indication of his leanings. the essays collected here and the spirit of the Theatre of Cruelty rely heavily on a romanticized idea of what theatre is/can do, on the existence of a mythical theatrical Eden from which we in the West have been banished, and on the short-sighted refraction of Asian theatre through a Western lens in order to make it apprehensible for Western use.

there is one argument of Artaud’s that I like and I choose to believe it is the core of his manifesto. it is articulated best in Production and Metaphysics:

basically Artaud claims that theatre has been reduced to the exchange of dialogue, the tensions of which are mostly mundane and psychological, and that the capacity of theatre as a visual medium has been eclipsed by these tendencies. full disclosure: I am coming at The Theatre and Its Double from the perspective of a lay film theorist (hardly even deserving of that term; I just like movies) and that’s where I am most interested in applying it. I think it holds true for cinema and can only assume that it is in fact relevant to theatre. I am routinely disappointed by how low most movies aim. we have near-infinite possibility to depict and it is often squandered. the same subjects, the same shots, the same edits, the same performances, blah blah blah blah. sometimes though a movie like Resident Evil: Afterlife or So Close or Salomé comes along and reminds me what’s possible. breaks my heart all over again. he may be full of shit but Artaud’s right that we should be testing the limits rather than simply retreading the same ground over and over. let’s play to all our senses! let’s approach the mystical! and importantly let’s look everywhere but the “classics” and for everything but what we have already seen.