ARTAUD, Antonin

Artaud is the author of a theoretical book so extraordinary, Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theatre and Its Double, 1958), that it lends authority to everything else he ever did: books of plays, his movie appearances, even his persistent madness. Influenced particularly by Balinese dancers he saw in Paris in the early 1930s, Artaud imagined a Western theater that would neglect realism and narrative for kinetic images, rituals, and even magic. Such theater could surround the audience, even enticing...