Lately, we have been focusing on Antonin Artaud's vision of what theatre should be. We wrote an essay on his idea compared to Brecht and his relationship with Balinese Theatre.
To sum it all up, Antonin Artaud was a theatre director, playwright, and actor who believed that theatre should shock the audience as much as possible. He invented the idea of The Theatre of Cruelty and used his performances with loud and disturbing lighting and sounds to affect he audience as much as possible.
He admired Balinese Dance Theatre because of its ritualization.
Our class was given a task to incorporate a the myth of Narcissus and Echo with Artaud.
Plot points of Narcissus and Echo:- The Goddess Juno is irritated by Echo and takes away her ability to talk. She allows Echo to only repeat the last word someone else has said.
- Echo, who is in love with Narcissus sees him hunting one day. When Narcissus asks "who's here", Echo is only able to say "here" faintly.
- Narcissus ignores this whisper and keeps on walking
- Echo, devastated, cries until there is nothing left of her but a faint echo.
- Narcissus meanwhile, approaches a lake and sees his reflection. He instantly falls in love with it.
- From starvation, or drowning (there are many different versions), Narcissus eventually dies and all that is left in the grass where he layed and starred at his reflection is a flower.
- The flower is now called a Narcissus.
To understand how we could incorporate this story with Artaud, we first had to see a bit of Artaud to visually understand his motives.
The link below is a short film in Spanish called El teatro de la crueldad (theatre of cruelty) from Germany, 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPVvU7kCwsI
After seeing this performance, we were very shocked however, we then learned that this was Artaud in extreme and that there were different interpretations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKEaDiHPGnA&feature=related
The link above is a performance from a theatre class performing their interpretation of Artaud. It was done in 2007.
After watching these clips, we gained a better general knowledge on how to incorporate this with our Narcissus and Echo Story.
Performance:
Roles:
Echo-Sara
Narcissus-Ann
Narcissus' reflection-Maria
Juno-Sofia (me)
Bypasser picking up Narcissus flower-Mei
Scene 1-Our performance began with Mei and Maria doing a dance and screaming while I drummed. This had no relation to the story of Narcissus and Echo however, we wanted to commence our skit with loud noises to capture the audience's attention immedietly.
Scene 2-We had everyone pampering the goddess juno except for Sara (echo )who was circling me and talking non-stop. I then yelled "SILENCE" and with my hands pushed them away as well as Sara. I walked towards Sara and took out her voice as if i were pulling out a rope from her neck.
Everyone began to scream until i clasped my hands. This meant that I was now in posession of her voice so everyone proceeded to hopelessly attempt to scream with no success, and began to spasm trying to express themselves.
Scene 3- Ann (narcissus) goes hunting and hears a noise. He asks "who's there" and Sara replies "here". Sara grabs Ann's feet, almost tripping her which symbolized her longing for him. Narcissus kicks her away, thinking she is a twig which represents him ignoring Echo's love. "HERE!" is yelled with a more desperate tone and we all begin to cry loudly.
Scene 4- Ann approaches a lake which we showed by placing 3 black wooden blocks. She admires her reflection which is shown by Maria sticking her face out from behind the blocks. She then turns towards the audience, yells and begins to strangle Ann. We all begin to scream. (hopefully shocking the audience). Ann then falls behind the black wooden block representing her death.
Scene 5- A flower is placed where Ann once sat. Mei, a randomn bypasser, picks up the flower and whispers Narcissus. She walks off stage.
Scene 6- Hysteric laughing is heard and we all sit on the black wood. Maria sits with her arms around Ann, showing that Ann has been defeated by Maria. And I sit with my arms around Sara, representing my power over her. Mei sits by herself.
Scene 7 (end)- We all walk towards the camera with our arms out as if to strangle someone while whispering Narcissus. The reason why we did this in the end was because we wanted to show our moral of the play: If you are vain and love yourself too much like Narcissus, nothing good will come from it. (we will strangle you.)
Constructive Critisism:
Our theatre teacher was satisfied with our performance however, he felt that more dialogue was necessary.
Also, the message may not have come across which is why I explained it above.
Reflection:
Coincidently, while browsing through video's of theatre groups of drama students performing their interpretations of Artaud, I realized that the High School play I was involved with called TINA! directed by Mr.Evans had a scene that some people could see as Artaud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOztBCwUv-g
The video above has a scene in the beginning where people are putting bags over someone's head. This idea is very shocking as it generally represents killing someone. In Tina, we originally wanted to put a bag over someones head to symbolize them dying however, it was taken out and replaced with shocking someone with the bag. Either way, we managed to unintentionally use Artauds idea of shocking the audience.
In 8th grade, I was involved in a highschool play called Bang, Bang, You're Dead! in my old school, Meadowridge School. I realize now that most of the play could have been considered Artaud-like. For example, there was a scene where a boy, who had killed many of his classmates at a school shooting, was put into a box. And the deceased, who he had killed and were talking to him in his mind, began to pound the box and scream very loudly. The box was then turned over, and the boy fell out of it. The disturbing noises and pounding would have definetly shocked the audience.
Furthermore, I enjoyed performing Artaud as an experience however, if I were to direct a theatrical performance, personally, I would prefer to only apply Artaud's ideas to certain scenes. For example, in Bang, Bang, You're Dead, we applied Stanisvlaski's idea of taking getting into the role you are playing by a past experience or memory. However, certain scenes or events had Artaud elements in them.
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