I had heard of Artaud but I never really understood what it was he wanted to achieve. In one of our first lessons studying Artaud we looked at a painting by Dali Drawn. The painting was called Autumn Cannibalism.
We were then given a list of made up words and instructed to create a piece that would assault the audience's senses.
In our next lesson we were split into two groups and told to choose a nursery rhyme where we used a universal language and gave the rhyme a whole new meaning from interpretation, bringing out the dark side to the rhymes and taking them to an extreme shocking the audience. We also interacted with the audience by tormenting them, and controlling them without their consent, assaulting their senses and allowing them to feel unexpected emotions.
This technique of Artaud's is known as The Cruelty of Theatre as his aim was to impact his audience through cruelty.
I found that learning about Artaud and his techniques was really interesting and I enjoyed it.
