Antonin Artaud | en

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (born September 4, 1896, in Marseille; died March 4, 1948, in Paris) was a playwright, actor, director, poet, and artist. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine (little Anthony) and was among a long list of names which Artaud went by throughout his life.
Antonin Artaud, more about...

Antonin Artaud had his first mental breakdown at the age of 16 and, from there on out, spent much of his life in and out of asylums. Diagnosed with “incurable paranoid delirium,” Artaud suffered from hallucinations, glossolalia, and bouts of violent rage. And his treatment probably did about as much harm as it did well. He was prescribed laudanum, which gave him a lifelong addiction to opiates. He endured some truly horrific procedures like electric shock treatment along with the highly dubious insulin therapy, which put him in a coma for a while.


In spite of this, Artaud proved to be a hugely influential theorist and playwright, famous for coining the term, “Theater of Cruelty.” His performances were designed to assault the senses and sensibilities of the audience and awaken them to the base realities of life -- sex, torture, murder and bodily fluids. Artaud wanted to break down the boundary between actor and audience and create an event that was ecstatic, uncontained and even dangerous. His ideas revolutionized the stage. As the late great Susan Sontag once wrote, “no one who works in the theater now is untouched by the impact of Artaud’s specific ideas.”

But generally speaking, his ideas about theater were more popular than his actual productions. One of his most famous plays, first staged in 1935, was Les Cenci, about a father who rapes his daughter and then gets brutally killed by his daughter’s hired thugs. The play was a flop when it debuted, running for a mere 17 performances. Even Sontag conceded that Les Cenci was “not a very good play.”

Artaud’s last work was an audio piece called 'To Have Done With The Judgment Of God' (Pour en Finir Avec le Jugement de Dieu), and it proved to be equally unpopular, at least with some very important people. Commissioned by Ferdinand Pouey, head of the dramatic and literary broadcasts for French Radio in 1947, the work was written by Artaud after he spent the better part of WWII interned in an asylum where he endured the worst of his treatment. The piece is as raw and emotionally naked as you might expect –an anguished rant against society. A raving screed filled with scatological imagery, screams, nonsense words, anti-American invectives and anti-Catholic pronouncements.

Subtitled: "Un avatar de tous les diables, histoire d'une émission interdite"
'Pour en Finir Avec le judgment de Dieu' is a radio work recorded in several sessions in the French Radiodiffusion studios during the month of November 1947. It was scheduled to be broadcast on February the 2nd, 1948 as part of the series La Voix des Poetes but it has immediately been banned from the air.
The recordings on this tape sound as if it was recorded on the radio in 1948 on a simple reel-to-reel recorder. This tape release was one of the rare releases of Pour En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu available in the 80's. .