(I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat).
Surrealism
Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life."
Artaud’s book in which he collected essyas/theories on theatre was named “Theatre And Its Double” I don’t really have an opinion on why he entitled his book this, maybe he believed real life was much like the theatre very dramatic.
Artaud’s theatre of cruelty was artaud’s attempt to revolutionalize theatre as well as freee the mind and spirit form the grip of culture. Not by sadism or by causing pain, but by a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality, which he said “lies like a shroud over our perceptions”. He described the theatre in spiritual terms, as well as physical, he believed that all expression is physical expression in space.
Artaud had a pessimistic view of the world, but he believed that theatre could affect change.
He wanted to remove the audience from the everyday and use symbolic objects to work with the emotions and soul of the audience.
He also wanted to use the grotesque, the ugly and pain in order to confront an audience, thereby being cruel to them.