1. Artaud – Use of Sound and Text
taken from Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty by Albert Bemel
Artaud encouraged actors to test out new voices, expressions, movements and to free
themselves from old habits and routines
“at the first rehearsal, Artaud rolled around on the stage, assumed a falsetto voice,
contorted himself, howled and fought logic, order and the “well-made” approach.
He forbade anyone to pay too close attention to the ‘story’ at the expense of its
spiritual significance. He sought desperately to translate the ‘truth’ of the text, and
not the words.”
Raymond Rouleau – actor in Artaud’s production of A Dream Play
He wanted the spoken word to acquire a varied theatricality, instead of becoming a recital
of information and feelings
Text must be intoned, shouted, whispered, wheezed, howled and groaned, sometimes in
contradiction to the denotative meanings of the words and sentences
Words are suggestive sounds and should be delivered for the sake of their sonority,
explosiveness, sensuous and associative properties
The voice is an instrument, to produce a flow of literally living sound that was not simply
meaningful speech
Artaud was the first director to use four distributed loudspeakers in his production of The
Cenci to create stereophonic sound. In this production, he combined sound effects of
recorded footsteps and rhythmic stamping, stormy winds and waves, the ticking of a
metronome, the clacking together of wooden blocks, notes from an organ, the recorded
chimes of Amiens Cathedral and the recorded humming-whirring of a factory, in addition to
atonal music
Artaud - ‘repeated sounds have a hypnotic effect’
The vocal and recorded sounds would be combined with music, silence, light, colour,
movement and gesture to create a “total language”.
Aim – to create an immersive, dangerous, sensory theatrical experience, which assaults and
swamps the audience, leaving them exhausted and changed.