Artaud and the Balinese Theatre

Abstract

When Antonin Artaud saw the Balinese actor-dancers at the Exposition Coloniale held in the Bois de Vincennes late in July 1931 , he was electrified by their perfonnance. Almost instantly, they became one of the major inspirations for his writings on the theatre, and provided him with the central idea for his Theatre de la Cruaute. In the months that followed , Artaud wrote feverishly to Jean Paulhan and others of what he had seen and of the significance of this experience for Western theatre as a whole. The Balinese in one perfonnance revealed what he had been dimly seeking in the Japanese Noh drama, in the Eastern and medieval Jewish mystics, in his work with the Theatre Alfred Jarry. Here at last was a living drama of movement and gesture, stylized but at the same time capable of expressing strong basic emotions; a drama both concrete and abstract that springs from ancient religious and tribal sources, and a time when man was still in direct contact with the natural world and with the ebb and flow of the cosmos; a drama in which music and costume form an integral part of the spectacle, suggesting a wealth of interrelated significances and symbols, both visible and invisible.

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