Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was one of the 20th century's most important theoreticians of the drama. He developed the theory of the Theater of Cruelty, which has influenced playwrights from Beckett to Genet, from Albee to Gelber. Antonin-Marie-Joseph...

When Antonin Artaud died of cancer in 1948 at the age of fifty-one, he was a marginal figure in the French artistic world. A minor motion-picture actor and founder of two short-lived avant-garde theater companies, Artaud was scarcely known as a writer...

ANTONIN ARTAUD IS ONE OF THE GREATEST EXAMPLES IN ART OF THE imaginative retrieval of a life that was beyond repair. What he ultimately accomplished should bear a torch through the dark nights of all our souls. Artaud was born in Marseilles,...

MY LIFE AND TIMES WITH ANTONIN ARTAUD Directed by: Gerard Mordillat Screenplay by: Mordillat, Jerome Prieur (book: Jacques Prevel) Starring: Sami Frey, Marc Barbe, Julie Jezequel, Valerie Jeannet Playing at: Brattle Theatre (in French, subtitles) Unrated ...

Here’s a few brief observations about Julia Roberts, now starring on Broadway in Richard Greenberg’s extremely slight 1997 Three Days of Rain. What Antonin Artaud has described as a “strange sun”—a light of abnormal intensity that illuminates everything in the theater—can be cruel and merciless....

Here’s a few brief observations about Julia Roberts, now starring on Broadway in Richard Greenberg’s extremely slight 1997 Three Days of Rain. What Antonin Artaud has described as a “strange sun”—a light of abnormal intensity that illuminates everything in the theater—can be cruel and...

“‘The Catastrophes of Heaven’: Modernism, Primitivism, and the Madness of Antonin Artaud,” in Modernism / Modernity, Vol. 3, No. 2, May, 1996, pp. 73-91. In the following essay, Sass presents a case history of Artaud as artist, primitivist, and madman, arguing that neither Artaud's art nor his madness led him out of the “malaise of modern existence,” characterized by the conflict between consciousness and instinctual being, but deeper into it.

“The Schizophrenic and Language: Surface and Depth in Lewis Carroll and Antonin Artaud,” in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, edited by Josue V. Harari, Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 277-95. In the following essay, Deleuze explores the differences between the languages constructed by Artaud, Lewis Carroll, and schizophrenics.

“Linguistic Disenchantment and Architectural Solace in DeLillo and Artaud,” in Mosaic, Vol. 30, No. 1, March, 1997, pp. 97-112. In the following essay, Thornton argues that in their work both Artaud and the novelist Don DeLillo transform language into an architecture of sounds.