2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

series of shots is a nightmarish image which would evoke the subconscious, in the method of the Surrealist movement, but also draws to mind the philosophy of Artaud’s theatre. It possesses the Surrealist focus on poetry and is concerned with love as it stands in the fundamental essence of human experience, a pursuit very much in keeping with the movement’s creative philosophy. All this considered, Les Mystères is undoubtedly a piece of Surrealist literature, but the fact that it bears to such an extent the sense of disorientation Artaud wanted to achieve seems to imply that the properties of his ideologies are inherent anyway when Surrealism is expressed in the Theatre. Les Mystères was likely the most faithful expression of Surrealism in the theatre, but the extent of the frameworks for creating theatre detailed in Artaud’s manifestoes on cruelty still provide a more completely developed expression of the fundamental Surrealist philosophies. To develop further understanding of Artaud’s theory, one would assume that one must look to its practical application in the theatre, but it is difficult to do so. Artaud’s 1935 production Les Cenci was the only real opportunity he took to produce the Theatre of Cruelty, and is considered by many (including Artaud himself) to be a remarkable failure. The cast was given limited rehearsal time in a space which did little to facilitate its creator’s vision (Knapp & Blinn, 1963), and contrary to common knowledge, Artaud himself wrote that the play “is not Theatre of Cruelty yet but is a preparation for it” (Artaud, et al., 1972, p. 100). Nevertheless, it is the best available representation of Artaud’s theories explicitly in practice. The only portion of the play text ever released for publication was Act I, Scene III, and it contains detailed notes regarding the production.

The scene opens with a tableau of a banquet, which Artaud describes as reminiscent of Veronese’s famous “The Wedding Feast at Cana”, but more barbaric. The scene should be an

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