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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The _____ apportions the human breath into six principal arcana.
(a) Bible.
(b) Cabala.
(c) Medical journal.
(d) Hindu priest.

2. Artaud claims that the public thinks first of all with its what?
(a) Senses.
(b) Body.
(c) Heart.
(d) Intellect.

3. Who, in addition to Shakespeare and Aeschylus does Artaud refer to as a great classicist in his "Letters on Language"?
(a) Moliere.
(b) Euripides.
(c) Racine.
(d) Sophocles.

4. What is the title of the first act of Artaud's proposed production for the Theater of Cruelty?
(a) "Blast of Cannons."
(b) "Evil Awaits."
(c) "Final Ship."
(d) "Warning Signs."

5. Artaud writes, "Cruelty is above all lucid, a kind of rigid control and submission to ______."
(a) Anguish.
(b) Love.
(c) Necessity.
(d) Furor.

6. Artaud claims in his first manifesto that Occidental theater should look at _____ theater for inspiration.
(a) Oriental.
(b) American.
(c) Mexican.
(d) African.

7. Artaud claims in his first letter of "Letters on Language" that while it still qualifies as "theater," a play which depends entirely on a scripted text is nothing but a _____ of theater.
(a) Imitation.
(b) Bad attempt.
(c) Distraction.
(d) Perversion.

8. In his Second Manifesto, Artaud describes the themes for the Theater of Cruelty as based on the ________ of ancient civilizations from all over the world.
(a) Poetry.
(b) Sacred texts.
(c) Religions.
(d) Theater.

9. The first line of Artaud's Second Manifesto, states, "Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, _________, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection."
(a) The poetic state.
(b) Freedom.
(c) A religious experience.
(d) Cruelty.

10. In Artaud's Second Manifesto, he describes the spectacle itself as being formed along the lines of _________ which will be materialized in gestures and movement before decaying into sounds and words.
(a) Bible verses.
(b) Ancient myths.
(c) Current events.
(d) Dream sequences.

11. What does Artaud say has "maintained us for ten years in an ineffectual torpor"?
(a) Opera.
(b) Theater.
(c) Musicals.
(d) Movies.

12. In what year were the letters dated from "Letters on Cruelty"?
(a) 1941.
(b) 1938.
(c) 1911.
(d) 1932.

13. What is the "distinct poetic state of mind" which Artaud terms for the film he discusses in "Two Notes"?
(a) Realism.
(b) Surrealism.
(c) Comedy.
(d) Absurdism.

14. Artaud claims that the psychological theater descended from whom?
(a) Shakespeare.
(b) Jarry.
(c) Zola.
(d) Racine.

15. The author claims that actors in France no longer "know how to do anything but" what?
(a) Stand.
(b) Sing.
(c) Bore.
(d) Talk.

Short Answer Questions

1. In his second note of "Two Notes," the author writes "When an atmosphere is so transformed that a hostile audience is suddenly and blindly immersed and invincibly disarmed, it must be hailed as _____."

2. Artaud intends his theater to to seek in the what of tremendous masses?

3. In his first letter of "Letters on Language," Artaud insists that the task of ______ must not be subordinated to spoken or written words as if this task was simply an accessory to theater."

4. What does Artaud write of the set for the Theater of Cruelty?

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

(see the answer keys)

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