View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the Preface, Artaud writes, "If confusion is the sign of the times, I see at the root of this confusion a rupture between things and ____".
(a) Life.
(b) Beauty.
(c) Love.
(d) Words.

2. Writing of Balinese performances, Artaud notes that "Everything is thus regulated and impersonal; not a movement of the muscles, not the rolling of an eye but seem to belong to a kind of reflective ________ which controls everything and by means of which everything happens."
(a) Science.
(b) Mathematics.
(c) Mechanization.
(d) Artistry.

3. Where does the theater of cruelty place the spectator?
(a) In the center of the spectacle.
(b) At the edge of the stage.
(c) At a distance.
(d) In the minds of the gods.

4. The author writes of the Balinese theater that "the sense of a new _________ based upon signs and no longer upon words, is liberated."
(a) Religion.
(b) Physical language.
(c) Code.
(d) Obscurity.

5. Artaud compares totemism to what in the Preface?
(a) An actor.
(b) A disaster.
(c) A god.
(d) A mask.

6. What word expressed by the translator is typically translated as "mind" because it has no English equivalent, combining as it does both mind and spirit?
(a) Jouissis.
(b) L'amour.
(c) Esprit.
(d) Rioutet.

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

8. What two organs are the most affected and atrophied by the plague?
(a) Kidneys and lungs.
(b) Pancreas and heart.
(c) Heart and gall bladder.
(d) Brain and lungs.

9. Where was the ship from that came to dock on the island of Artaud's metaphor?
(a) Africa.
(b) Egypt.
(c) Beirut.
(d) Istanbul.

10. Artaud writes, "We are told that the Mysteries of ______ confined themselves to the mise en scene of a certain number of moral truths."
(a) Sappho.
(b) Orpheus.
(c) Eleusis.
(d) Odysseus.

11. The biggest obstacle standing in the way of a complete and fundamental renewal of the art of theater is the respect and admiration that we have for the what?
(a) Classic texts.
(b) Music.
(c) Actors.
(d) Directors.

12. What does the term "Occidental" mean?
(a) Eastern.
(b) Southern.
(c) Western.
(d) African.

13. Who is the painter whom Artaud writes of in "Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene"?
(a) Andres Michaeleas.
(b) Hans Vernswarth.
(c) Lucas van den Leyden.
(d) Pablo Picasso.

14. The author says that the problem at the heart of Occidental theater is that western art and culture systematically confuse art with what?
(a) Aestheticism.
(b) Knowlege.
(c) Ignorance.
(d) Emotion.

15. In the Preface, Artaud contends we must "break through ________ in order to touch life to create or recreate the theater."
(a) Order.
(b) Reason.
(c) Language.
(d) Performance.

Short Answer Questions

1. In order to put theater back on its original path, it will be necessary to link it with everything that can exist as an ______ on a stage.

2. Artaud remarks that the problem is that "all true feeling in _____ is untranslatable; translating it would be betraying and dissimulating it."

3. 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."

4. Where is the painting Artaud speaks of in "Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene"?

5. Of the Balinese theater, Artaud remarks that "setting aside the prodigious mathematics of this spectacle, what seems most surprising and astonishing to us is this aspect of matter as" what?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 556 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample