“Antonin Artaud: The Prophet of the Avant-Garde Theater,” in The Theater of Protest and Paradox: Developments in the Avant-Garde Drama, New York University Press, 1964, pp. 14-27.

In the following essay, Wellwarth compares Artaud's dramatic theories to the work of Alfred Jarry.

[This essay appeared in a slightly different form in Drama Survey, Vol. 2, Winter, 1963, pp. 276–87.]

One of the more curious and paradoxical aspects of modern theatrical history is that trends in the drama have been started not by the playwrights but by the critics. The dramatist presents the thesis, but it is the critical commentator who presents the counterthesis that is necessary before the final synthesis of a new theatrical movement can be produced. The drama of the past (the ancient Greek plays, the Roman comedy, the medieval mysteries and moralities, the Elizabethan heroic play, the eighteenth century sentimental drama, the nineteenth century melodrama and well-made jigsaw puzzle...