<\/h4>\n

Artaud\u2019s Aristotelian Overture<\/b><\/h4>\n

By<\/h4>\n

Jared Wright<\/b><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTragedy,\u2026 produces its effect even without movement; its quality is apparent from a mere reading\u2026 It offers verisimilitude when read no less than when performed.\u201d (Aristotle 54-55)<\/p>\n

\u201cAs if Literature were worth bothering with, as if it were not elsewhere that we had always fixed our lives.\u201d (Artaud 161)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is essential to put an end to the subjugation of the theater to the text.\u201d (Artaud 78)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe events, the story, are the point of tragedy, and that is the most important thing of all\u2026 So the story is the foundation and as it were the soul of tragedy.\u201d (Aristotle 24)<\/p>\n

The Theater of Cruelty, a theater enigmatically described by Artaud as the \u201cauthentic performance of magic,\u201d (Sontag 161) and considered one of veritable \u2018impossibilities\u2019 onstage (Lublin 62), diverged greatly from Aristotle\u2019s Poetics <\/i>and the common understanding of theatrical performance that had held fast for centuries. Aristotle\u2019s exploration of theater and his explanations of tragedy had served as a principal authority for performance techniques and stagecraft since its inception, and while many before Artaud had questioned those tenets, the \u2018Occidental\u2019 theater seemed never to waver too far from this canon (Berghaus 26). Though Artaud\u2019s revolutionary and elusive theater was communicated in aphoristic and often contradictory statements, it may have been fitting for it to have been difficult to grasp, because Artaud heralded his new \u2018Oriental\u2019 approach as one that revalued the center of the theatrical experience. He sought to change the theater from one of contrived literary and psychologic mimesis to an organic theater in which directors would \u201caim to transform the very state of \u2026<\/p>\n

listeners by moving them physically.\u201d It was a lofty and, deemed by many, impossible aim, a judgement supported by most accounts which viewed his attempts at bringing a tangible Theater of Cruelty to life as failures and misunderstandings (Costich 103). This essay attempts to develop an understanding of The Theater of Cruelty by explaining the connection it maintains with the very theater it often refutes\u2014Aristotle\u2019s. The physical movement of the audience, a visceral response, is the goal of The Theater of Cruelty, and I contend that Artaud\u2019s theatrical aspirations are in fact grounded in the Aristotelian concept of a cathartic theater.<\/p>\n

The Rebel\u2019s Conformity <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

It may seem counter-intuitive to consider Artaud’s use of Aristotelian concepts in light of his open antipathy to the theater predicated upon its tenets. Artaud’s distrust of Aristotle was well recorded in his writing. In \u201cMetaphysics and the Mise en Scene,\u201d he attacked the very core of Aristotelian theater\u2014the text. He wrote:<\/p>\n

How does it happen in the theater, at least in the theater as we know it in Europe, or better in the Occident, everything specifically theatrical, i.e., everything that cannot be expressed in speech, in words, or if you prefer everything that is not contained in dialogue\u2026 is left in the background?… A theater which subordinates the mise en scene and production, i.e., everything in itself that is specifically theatrical, to the text, is a theater of idiots, madmen, introverts, grammarians, grocers, antipoets and positivists, i.e., Occidentals. (39-41)<\/p>\n

This excerpt highlights that Artaud, before resorting to insults, completely rejected the traditional understanding of stagecraft that Aristotle originated. His new focal point became the director. He seems to have responded directly to Aristotle\u2019s assertion in Poetics <\/i>that there should be a\u00a0\u201cprimacy of plot\u201d in a performance, that \u201cstaging\u2026 is not a matter of art and is not integral to poetry,\u201d that it \u201cbelongs more to the scene painter\u2019s\u2026 than to\u2026 the poets\u201d (25-26). Here we must acknowledge that Artaud\u2019s mode of transferring or communicating the story of the stage to the audience cannot be reconciled to the Aristotelian concepts of theater. Aristotle\u2019s was a theater of the playwright, while Artaud made a demiurge of the director. The new language of gestures in space and spectacle that Artaud demanded of his theater, the theater he described as the \u201dpoetry of the senses\u201d (37), clearly set a demarcation line between The Cruel and the Aristotelian Theaters. But we must recognize that these were differences only in the mode of communication.<\/p>\n

Despite only differing in mode, the extremity of Artaud\u2019s deviations led some to contend that his work was aimless, that his was \u201can insurrection without an institutional foundation and thus without a predictable trajectory\u201d (Gorelick 263). This belief derives from the seemingly endless obfuscations and extreme metaphors Artaud consistently made of his ultimate goal– a theater that can manifest a transformative experience in its audiences. Artaud felt that the older, text based, mode of theatrical expression no longer provided for the needs of audiences, but his rejection wasn\u2019t necessarily of the ancient theater. In \u201cMetaphysics and the Mise en Scene\u201d when Artaud stated that he sought something, \u201ccapable of reintroducing on the stage a little breath of that great metaphysical fear which is at the root of all ancient theater\u201d(44), he seemed to echo the sentiments of Aristotelian theater. Indeed, Aristotle demanded just that intensity from every performance. He felt that audiences must experience \u201ca series of events [during which they] should feel dread and pity\u201d (Aristotle 33). Artaud felt that the theater of his age had lost that ability. He confirmed this strong connection to Aristotle\u2019s requirement of a performance in \u201cThe Theater and Cruelty\u201d when he wrote \u201cat the point of deterioration which our sensibility\u00a0has reached, it is certain that we need above all a theater that wakes us up; nerves and heart\u201c (Artaud 84). The nerves, of course, are referring to fear and the heart to pity. So while Artaud sought a different means of expression, the goals of The Theater of Cruelty were the same– catharsis through fear and pity. This Aristotelian (ancient) foundation upon which he based his performance is, I believe, a starting point for understanding his eventual, while not necessarily predictable, trajectory.<\/p>\n

Historical Release <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The goal, the telos, of theater, as set out in Aristotle\u2019s Poetics<\/i>, is catharsis. Aristotle emphasizes this point in his summarizing section, \u201cWhat has been said\u201d at the beginning of Poetics<\/i>. As Belfiore states, \u201cThe definition of tragedy, the conclusion… include[s] the final cause (telos) of tragedy, and Aristotle\u2019s phrasing, \u2018Accomplishing katharsis,\u201d suggests that Katharsis is this final cause\u2019\u201d(158). In his definition of tragedy, which he considered the only worthy form of performance, Aristotle stated that tragedy would \u201cEffect through pity and fear, the purification of such emotions\u201d (23). Acknowledging that catharsis is the goal of theater demands that we interrogate the term, which has been contested and debated by scholars since Poetics <\/i>was rediscovered in the Renaissance. For a proper evaluation of the ways in which The Theater of Cruelty as laid out by Artaud shares this desired effect, we must come to an understanding of what Aristotle actually meant by a cathartic theater. Scholars and philologists have offered varying interpretations with their own sets of implications for the stage, and Aristotle\u2019s full explanation of the term has infamously been lost to antiquity. A cursory review of the essential interpretations will help us place Artaud in the framework of that canon. (Meisiek 800).<\/p>\n

The etymology of catharsis has its origins in the practices of medicine and rituals in ancient Greece. The Dionysian cult used cathartic rituals to cleanse the body of sicknesses through ecstatic expressions and dances. Most translators decide to interpret catharsis as a \u201cpurification,\u201d but some apply the terms \u201ccleansing,\u201d \u201cpurgation,\u201d or \u201crefining\u201d (Kenny XXV). These translations reflect the various historical interpretations of the actual cathartic state. During the Renaissance it was interpreted as a cleansing of the mind from erroneous thoughts or beliefs or a negative affect (Meisiek 801). Christian thinkers such as Rousseau interpreted it as a movement toward stoicism, an attempt at hardening the audience to the suffering evident in life, a purgation of fear and pity. Lessing conceived of a refining catharsis, a transforming of passions into virtues through empathy, a balancing or calibration, par excellence. <\/i>Goethe and Nietzsche approached catharsis as an aesthetic element of drama, a feeling of completion in the performance itself, slowly relieving it of its didactic responsibility (Pavis 45).<\/p>\n

A Comparative Analysis <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The Theater of Cruelty seems to flout all of these interpretations of catharsis. In The Theater and Its Double<\/i>, Artaud indirectly addresses the Renaissance\u2019s understanding of catharsis as a cognitive movement from ignorance to enlightenment. He asserts in \u201cThe Alchemical Theater\u201d that:\u00a0to analyze such\u2026 drama philosophically is impossible; only poetically and by seizing upon what is communicative and magnetic in the principles of all the arts can we, by shapes, sounds, music, and volumes, evoke, passing by way of all natural resemblances of images and affinities to each other not the primordial directions of the mind, which our excessive logical intellectualism would reduce to merely useless schemata, but states of\u00a0an acuteness so intense and absolute that we sense, beyond the tremors of all music and form, the underlying menace of a chaos as decisive as it is dangerous. (50)<\/p>\n

This quotation elucidates the aim of The Theater of Cruelty as one that creates a feeling, not an intellectual understanding or a cleansing of erroneous thoughts. Artaud believed that the theater should occupy a field of expression inaccessible to articulation. In Artaud\u2019s panegyric \u201dOn the Balinese Theater\u201d he lauds the actors as performers of \u201canimated hieroglyphs\u201d emphasizing that \u201cthese spiritual signs have a precise meaning which strikes us only intuitively but with enough violence to make useless any translation into logical discursive language\u201d (54). Here he emphasized the theater\u2019s responsibility to give expression to \u201cthe unknown, fabulous, and obscure reality which we here in the Occident have completely repressed\u201d (61). The intention of such a theater would not ground its end in a catharsis of the same mind it subjugates.<\/p>\n

Artaud also decisively rejected the Christian interpretations of catharsis as a cleansing of negative affect or as a morally instructive medium. In \u201cThe Theater and the Plague,\u201d Artaud demanded we create a theater that can, \u201cmotivate acts so gratuitously absurd\u201d so as to liken it to a plague. He feels at the moment when disease can cripple a society and all norms collapse, \u201cat that moment the theater is born. The Theater, i.e., an immediate gratuitousness provoking acts without use or profit\u201d (Artaud, 24). Here, Artaud exhibits a chaotic understanding of the cathartic moment, when anything can happen, any impulse can be acted upon. Artaud revels in Augustine\u2019s revulsion of the \u2018sinful spectacles\u2019 of theater, writing, \u201cAugustine complains of this similarity between the action of the plague that kills without destroying the organs, and the theater which, without killing, provokes the most mysterious alterations in the mind of not only the individual but an entire populace\u201d (26). Augustine identifies the theater as a \u201cdangerous scourge\u2026 that attacks not bodies but customs\u2026 the soul\u201d (26). He understands the theater as a\u00a0corruptor of goodness, the opposite of a creator of purity or stoicism, and Artaud relishes in the corruptive power of the theater. He writes, \u201cIn the theater as in the plague there is something both victorious and vengeful\u201d (27). Here, it is clear; Artaud places little value on a moralizing theater.<\/p>\n

As with the other interpretations of catharsis, The Theater of Cruelty repudiates performances that refine or balance desires or produce an aesthetic satisfaction. Artaud sought \u201ca theater that also takes gestures and pushes them as far as they will go\u201d(27) and he contends that from theater, \u201cwe desire an example of absolute freedom in revolt,\u201d when \u201cwe are obliged to advance still further into an endless vertigo\u201d(29). A theater that encourages such extremes would be deemed incompatible with the concepts of par excellence<\/i>. Artaud scoffed at any performance that catered to such ends. He decried \u201cthe spiritual infirmity of the Occident, which is the place par excellence <\/i>where men have confused art and aestheticism\u2026 in an attempt to castrate the forms of art\u201d (70). His contempt for theater that focused on art for art\u2019s sake was keenest in his thoughts on \u201cThe Alfred Jarry Theater.\u201d Artaud wrote, \u201cIf the theater is an amusement, too many serious problems demand our attention for us to be able to divert the least particle of it to anything so ephemeral\u201d (Sontag 155). He continued, \u201cIf we did not have the very clear and very profound sense that an intimate part of our lives was involved in that spectacle, we would see no point in pursuing the experiment\u201d (156). To Artaud, the source of performance had to be in the real world, an essential element of our lives.<\/p>\n

What is Left <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Where, then, does that leave us? The historical interpretations of catharsis fail to address the aims of The Theater of Cruelty. The Cruel Theater, as defined by Artaud, was one that\u00a0evoked \u201cuntranslatable\u201d (Artaud 71) feelings involving an \u201cintimate part of our lives\u201d (Sontag 156) whose \u201cobject is not to resolve social or psychological conflict\u2026, but to express objectively certain secret truths, to bring to the light of day certain aspects of truth that have been buried\u201d (Artaud 70). He desired that audience members know as they entered the theater, that they \u201cwould not come out unscathed.\u201d Artaud wanted an intensely serious theater that would express feelings otherwise inexpressible. But that goal, and the failure of that goal to assimilate to historical interpretations of catharsis, does not leave the Cruel Theater outside the realm of cathartic theater. The fault may lie with the interpretations of Aristotelian catharsis and not the original intent.<\/p>\n

Some modern scholars find earlier readings of Poetics <\/i>to be insufficient. Elizabeth Belfiore asserts in Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion <\/i>that \u201cMany scholars\u2026 have erred in interpreting catharsis too narrowly, in terms of only one of these aspects\u201d (259). She highlights that, \u201cG.E. Lessing characterized catharsis in exclusively ethical terms,\u201d and that \u201cearlier works overemphasized the intellectual aspects of katharsis, arguing that katharsis is \u2018the process of clarification\u2019\u201d (259). When she says that these thinkers \u201cfailed to take into account Aristotle\u2019s view that the emotions had cognitive as well as physical aspects,\u201d she contends that Aristotle had a more encompassing definition of the cathartic movement, one that \u201cwas suitable to the whole nature of man\u201d (259-60).<\/p>\n

Other contemporary thinkers have viewed their predecessors\u2019 interpretations of catharsis as inadequate. Boal rebelled against the common concept of catharsis as nothing more than, \u201cAristotle\u2019s coercive system of tragedy\u2026 a very powerful purgative system, the object of which is to eliminate all that is not commonly accepted\u201d (47). He desired a catharsis that motivates action, which echoes in similar tones Artaud\u2019s ideas proposed in \u201cThe Theater and the Plague.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artaud asserts that, \u201cIn the true theater a play disturbs the sense\u2019s repose, frees the repressed unconscious, incites a kind of virtual revolt\u201d (28). The Cruel Theater\u2019s aim was to reveal something that was so powerful that it could cause \u201ctrue action\u201d or impulsive expression that would before have seemed unconscionable. But then where does that cruel catharsis fit into Aristotle\u2019s original explanation?<\/p>\n

One possible overlap appears in Samuel Weber\u2019s \u201cTheatricality as Medium,\u201d which identifies commonalities between Artaudian and Aristotelian catharsis. In his chapter \u201cThe Virtual Reality of Theater: Antonin Artaud\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n

Does not Artaud\u2019s defense of the Theater of Cruelty recall Aristotle\u2019s defense of tragedy in terms of catharsis, a kind of purgation? Is there not throughout Artaud\u2019s writings on theater an appeal to \u2018\u2018action\u2019\u2019 that \u2018\u2018doubles,\u2019\u2019 as it were, Aristotle\u2019s emphasis on tragic mimesis as the imitation of an action, a praxeos? (Weber 279)<\/p>\n

Weber understands that Artaud wasn’t necessarily \u201canti-Aristotelian,\u201d but merely against the manipulations of Aristotle\u2019s Poetics <\/i>that were prevalent in the theater of his time. Weber also charged both theoreticians with forming ideas of catharsis that are didactic: \u201cAnd does not Artaud\u2019s emphasis\u2026 on a certain pedagogical function of theater also echo the passages in the Poetics <\/i>in which Aristotle seeks to justify mimesis against its Platonic condemnation by stressing its didactic virtues?\u201d(279) Artaud vehemently confirms this as he writes in the Alfred Jarry Theater, \u201cHenceforth [we] will go to the theater the way [we] go[es] to the surgeon or the dentist.\u201d (Sontag 160). Weber recognizes that there is something to be learned, intuitively, in the cathartic moments of both Artaud and Aristotle.<\/p>\n

Of course the lessons of Aristotle and Artaud differ greatly, but that would not eliminate Artaud from applying his more chaotic message to a similar cathartic function in the theater. Interestingly, Weber does not agree. He contends that Aristotle\u2019s ideological differences from Artaud create a rift for the Cruel Theater that make it irreconcilable to the Aristotelian cathartic moment. He says that Aristotle was always moving toward unity, consensus, that his theater \u201cis ultimately concerned, not with individuals, but with making \u2018\u2018man\u2019\u2019 and his consciousness the measure of all things, in particular, the measure of all theater\u201d (282). To Weber, Artaud, by contrast, wanted all audiences to be reminded of the fact that \u201cthe sky can still fall on our heads,\u201d that our unity forming systems are constructs (283-285). Weber\u2019s primary assertion and eventual conclusion is that the \u201crigor\u201d and \u201ccruelty\u201d to which Artaud constantly refers– an unrelenting \u2018virtual reality\u2019 <\/i>that must be transferred to the stage (282), sets him apart from Aristotle. Weber errs when, in the course of his \u201cvirtual\u201d realization, he precludes a commonality between Artaudian and Aristotelian catharsis. He asserts that Artaud \u201cseeks to dehumanize the notion of peripeteia (the fear driving the cathartic moment) and thereby to turn it against its mythological origins\u201d (Aristotle) (286). For Weber, Artaud\u2019s deviant didactic message separates his catharsis from Aristotle\u2019s, but this summation fails to consider the contexts into which each theater needs to speak.<\/p>\n

A Continued Connection <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Weber\u2019s engagement with The Cruel Theater, one that holds true to Artaud\u2019s ideological message, seems to fall prey in its course to the same error of earlier epochs by limiting the definition of Aristotelian catharsis. That Aristotle could not have imagined a catharsis that could properly deliver its purgative affect without touting his dogmas greatly underestimates his foresight. Scholars recognize that Aristotle was a philosopher foremost, and he sought to arrange<\/p>\n

a complete ontology; he may even have preferred tragedy to affirm his beliefs, but his explication of dramatic art did not limit tragedy so. He even states at the beginning of the history of tragedy that \u201cthis (Poetics<\/i>) is not the place to inquire whether even now tragedy is all that it should be\u2026 whether in itself or in relation to its audience\u201d (21). To Aristotle tragedy was representation of truth, and catharsis was the physical and emotional revelation of that same truth created through the performance of the tragedy. So the relation of those truths could always be improved upon. He acknowledges himself that he did not know if the means to create that catharsis reached its full potential, whether tragedy \u201cis all that it should be…\u201d This acknowledgement almost begs for innovation in the mode of transferring the cathartic goal.<\/p>\n

While he did anticipate changes upon the form, Aristotle assuredly did not anticipate a breach of form quite as stark as The Cruel Theater, but Artaud\u2019s extreme deviation was actually an attempt at a return to the cathartic theater of Aristotle\u2019s drama. He writes in \u201cThe Theater and the Plague\u201d:<\/p>\n

The terrorizing apparition of Evil which in the Mysteries of Eleusis was produced in its pure, truly revealed form corresponds to the dark hour of certain ancient tragedies which all true theater must recover. If the essential theater is like the plague, it is not because it is contagious, but because like the plague it is the revelation, the bringing forth, the exteriorization of latent cruelty.<\/p>\n

This excerpt speaks to two important points. The theater, to Artaud, had lost its potency, and that potency was lost because that theater could no longer transfer fear and pity effectively to reveal truth or exteriorize, physicalize, its relieving aspect. Here is Artaud\u2019s catharsis, one that strikes the audience as a physical revelation of true conditions and relieves the viewer of\u00a0dependency upon false constraints. It may be termed as a purgation, but it is one that purges in a very physical way, the effects of a repressed self.<\/p>\n

Artaud\u2019s physical cathartic effect harkens to Breuer\u2019s and Freud\u2019s experiments with the psychological and physical manifestations of repressed expression in Studies on Hysteria<\/i>. In their experimentation with Anna O., a woman with severe physical manifestations of what they called a \u201cstrangulated affect\u201d (Breuer and Freud 286), Breuer and Freud found catharsis to be the desirous result of her free expression of her experience. Eventually Freud took the term catharsis from Breuer, called it abreaction, and incorporated it into his psychoanalyses. These pre-psychoanalytical experiments consciously appealed to the cathartic method of Dionysian festivals (Meisiek 6).<\/p>\n

Belfiore finds insight into Aristotle\u2019s understanding of catharsis from a return to Dionysian festivals as well. Within the ecstatic displays and purgative elements of the spectacle at the Dionysian festival, she says that Aristotle\u2019s \u201ctragedy is a verbal analogue of the drinking cup reproduced in the frontispiece, in which a terrifying gorgoneion glares in the midst of reveling wine drinkers\u201d (359). In such a description the gorgoneion, a monster who purges revelers of their supposed confidence in systems as they are, seems to be reminiscent of Artaud\u2019s intentions for the Theater of the Plague. Indeed, Belfiore continues, \u201cAristotle fully agreed with Aeschylus: There is a place where the terrible is good, and must remain established, an overseer of thoughts\u201d (359). Such an assertion of the menace in tragedy exhibits an understanding of tragedy and the cathartic moment that reminds one that \u201cthe sky can still fall on our heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ancient grounding in a physical purgation of suffocating affect, the cathartic method of Dionysian rituals, is where Artaud sought to return. He wanted to reintroduce the gorgoneion into the room. But to create true representation one must create a theater that reproduces the\u00a0essential struggles of the age in which it is performed. Only then can one have a catharsis that \u201cseems to manifest its presence in\u2026 the very organs of the body\u201d (Artaud 21). Aristotle\u2019s philosophy responded to the zeitgeist of his era\u2014one that built the foundations of Western thought. Therefore the catharsis of his theater would give to his audiences a physical and emotional revelation reflecting that philosophy, a sense of consensus. Artaud belonged to a post Nietzsche, post Kierkegaard world, a world that was questioning the primacy of man\u2019s meaning-making ontologies, so it would only make sense to reveal a truth that reflected his time. His deviations from the other tenets of Aristotelian theater were actually an attempt at reinstating his understanding of the \u2018ancient\u2019 catharsis to which Aristotle alludes. The means of delivering what Aristotle deemed the telos of all tragedy no longer struck audiences with enough force. So in Artaud\u2019s fidelity to the principle doctrine of Aristotelian theater, he dismembered it to \u201crestore the theater, by means of ceremonies of indubitable age\u2026 to its original destiny\u201d (53). That aim, an effective mimesis that can physically reveal truth and purge an audience of misconceptions of an easy world, does not separate The Theater of Cruelty from Aristotle\u2019s theater, but is the critical element that unites them.<\/p>\n

Works Cited: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Aristotle. Kenny, Anthony, Translator. Poetics<\/i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.<\/p>\n

Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double<\/i>. New York: Grove Press, 1958.<\/p>\n

Belfiore, Elizabeth. Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion<\/i>. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.<\/p>\n

Boal, Augusto. McBride, Charles and Maria, Translators. Theatre of the Oppressed<\/i>. New York: Theatre Communications Group. 1979.<\/p>\n

Breuer, Josef, and Sigmund Freud. Studies on Hysteria<\/i>. New York: Basic, 1957. Print.<\/p>\n

Costich, Julia. Antonin Artaud<\/i>. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.<\/p>\n

Gorelick, Nathan. \u201cLife in Excess: Insurrection and Expenditure in Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty\u201d. Discourse <\/i>33.2 (2011): 263\u2013279. Web.<\/p>\n

Lublin, Robert. \u201cCadences of Cruelty: Artaud\u2019s Discursive Performance\u201d. Theatre Symposium Vol. 8 (2000). Web: http:\/\/works.bepress.com\/robert_lublin\/3\/.<\/p>\n

Meisiek, Stefan. “Which Catharsis Do They Mean? Aristotle, Moreno, Boal and Organization Theatre.” Organization Studies (2004): 797-816. Print.<\/p>\n

Moser, Keith. \u201c(Re)-Attaching Truth to the Physical Realities of the Universe : Antonin Artaud and J.M.G. Le Clezio\u2019s Philosophical Quest.\u201d Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. 34 p.83. Print.<\/p>\n

Pavis, Patrice. Shantz, Christine, Translator. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis<\/i>. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1998.<\/p>\n

Sakellaridou, Elizabeth. \u201cOh my god, audience participation!: Some twenty-first-century reflections\u201d. Comparative Drama. 48.1-2 p.13. Print.<\/p>\n

Sontag, Susan, ed. Artaud, Antonin. Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings<\/i>. California: University of California, 1976.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artaud\u2019s Aristotelian Overture By Jared Wright   \u201cTragedy,\u2026 produces its effect even without movement; its quality is apparent from a mere reading\u2026 It offers verisimilitude when read no less than when performed.\u201d (Aristotle 54-55) \u201cAs if Literature were worth bothering … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2817,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonexperimentaltheatre.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}