Artaud’s Plague Theatre

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, I intend to reread “The Theatre and the Plague,” one of Antonin Artaud’s most famous essays on theatre included in The Theatre and Its Double. In this manifesto, Artaud started sketching out his new vision for theatre, the Theatre of Cruelty, which he would begin experimenting with in the mid-1930s but would only later fully put into practice after World War II and his return to Paris in the late 1940s. In “The Theatre and the Plague,” Artaud compares and even assimilates theatre to plague. By doing so, he revisits the philosophical concept of catharsis in a transgressive manner and revamps it for the contemporary practices of performance and body art. This text corresponds to one of Artaud’s first and many interventions in the field of psychoanalysis. It helps us reflect on epidemics by highlighting their psychic effects while bringing to light certain overlooked medical truths. This staging of epidemics opens new venues for performance beyond traditional settings such as Artaud’s body art: intermedia therapeutic rituals aiming at the transformation of the body

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Catharsis · Context (archaeology · Cruelty · Drama · Literature · Manifesto · Plague (disease · Political science · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theatre studies · Visual arts · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · Law · Neurology and Historical Studies · Psychology

• "Performing "Aume

  Maxime Philippe•Theatre Journal•2020

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