2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

theatre. Vitrac’s plays were more conventionally Surrealist than Artaud’s best known work, but the pair worked together to direct them. (Kimberly, 2005) The former’s plays bend conventions of the theatre and storytelling, while remaining rooted in the informed subconscious of the author’s mind. Early plays like the Le peintre (the painter) carry the distinct influence of Dada, but also bear the early seeds of Surrealism (Auslander, 1980). Vitrac and Artaud together staged a number of the former’s plays. Of these Les Mystères de l’amour (The Mystery of Love) is Artaud’s most well documented venture into explicitly Surrealist drama. The play attempts to immerse the audience in the form of a dream, discussing the content of love and its consequences. The play consists of 3 acts and a prologue, containing a total of 5 tableaux which centre largely around a couple named Patrick and Leah. The first of these opens with Patrick compelling Leah to confess. While it is at first unclear exactly what, Patrick eventually reveals through a rambling, dreamlike passage of dialogue that Patrick wanted Leah to confess her love for him. She finally does so with vigour, and the confession is followed by a voice in the audience accusing the pair of madness. They agree with the voice, who follows with the line “Do you hear them, Martine?” and a shot. This is repeated several times with a different name each time, and the tension built here culminates with several voices calling out variations of “Kill me, Kill him! Kill her! Mercy! Pardon! The Child”, accompanied by a tumult of shots, violence, and chaos. This is punctuated by the house lights turning off suddenly and the stage being left half lit (Vitrac, 1966). This tableau goes on, but even in this relatively brief excerpt there is a great deal to analyse with respect to the play’s conventions.

The dreamlike property of Surrealist literature is immediately recognisable, as is the spirit of the “cruelty” Artaud would later come to describe in such detail. The chaos following the

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