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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through VIII. The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto).

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The "gold" of the theater evokes in the spirit what, according to Artaud?
(a) Poetry.
(b) Answers to man's questions.
(c) True understanding.
(d) Absolute and abstract purity.

2. What, along with theater scripted in words, must disappear because it loses its value as soon as it is repeated?
(a) Poetry.
(b) Dance.
(c) Sculpture.
(d) Paintings.

3. Artaud suggests that "true theater" should not mirror human life but instead should evoke what?
(a) A world of the gods and goddesses of old.
(b) A reality where humans must have little influence or effect.
(c) A world of artistic vision.
(d) Heaven and Hell.

4. Of the performers of the Balinese theater, Artaud writes, "They are like huge _____ full of lines and segments drawn to connect them with an unknown natural perspective of which they seem nothing more than a, kind of detached geometry."
(a) Insects.
(b) Gods.
(c) Men.
(d) Monsters.

5. What is the duration of all of the great plagues, according to Artaud?
(a) One year.
(b) Five years.
(c) Six years.
(d) Five months.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Artaud say diminishes the value of the theater?

2. Artaud writes, "We are told that the Mysteries of ______ confined themselves to the mise en scene of a certain number of moral truths."

3. On what island does Artaud's metaphor of the plague take place?

4. The author writes of the Balinese theater that "the sense of a new _________ based upon signs and no longer upon words, is liberated."

5. Artaud writes of the comparison of theater to alchemy, "It is that alchemy and the theater are so to speak _____ arts, and do not carry their end--or their reality within themselves."

(see the answer key)

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