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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through IX. Letters on Cruelty.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Balinese theater, voice and speech are given an entirely new role, in part because the power of the director, or __________ of a play is absolute.
(a) Metteur en scène.
(b) Raison d'etre.
(c) Mais de scene.
(d) Dictator.

2. Artaud writes that to "restore [theater] to its original direction, to reinstate it in its religious and metaphysical aspect, is to reconcile it with ______."
(a) The universe.
(b) The gods.
(c) The civilization.
(d) The religious.

3. What is proposed by the author as meant to shake up the foundations of civilization and culture as a whole?
(a) Theater of shadows.
(b) Theater of cruelty.
(c) Theater of gesture.
(d) Theater of meaning.

4. Artaud claims that the lighting equipment now in use would no longer be what for the Theater of Cruelty?
(a) Inspired.
(b) Adequate.
(c) Realistic.
(d) Abstract.

5. Artaud states that in the Oriental theater, forms assume and extend their "sense and their significations on all possible levels; or, if you will, they set up ______ not on a single level, but on every level of the mind at once."
(a) Gestures.
(b) Music.
(c) Vibrations.
(d) Words.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Artaud write in his first letter of "Letters on Cruelty" that he cannot reveal the particulars of?

2. What is the name of the ship in Artaud's metaphor of the plague?

3. In order to reinvent and modernize theater, it is necessary to get rid of what?

4. In the Preface, Artaud contends we must "break through ________ in order to touch life to create or recreate the theater."

5. What, along with theater scripted in words, must disappear because it loses its value as soon as it is repeated?

(see the answer key)

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