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In our piece we used blackouts for scenes such as the transcript, where we knew the audience would know what was happening with the dialogue, but could not see it. We wanted to do this to make them feel uncomfortable as they do not know how close we are or if they are next.

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We performed our Artaud piece on the 11/12/17 and it went really well, especially when compared to the dress and tech run that we did a couple hours prior. The transcript went especially well which as a group we were all extremely happy about. We were given good feedback in terms of how disturbed the audience members felt, as they felt like someone was going to jump out from behind them at any point during the performance. Some things did not work as well as we had planned though, such as squirting the audience with warm water when we did a scene where we slit someones throat, as the water did not go far enough. This was due to the seating, as we wanted the audience to be on the ground rather than on the theatre seating where they had a rail protecting them from the performance, so we laid chairs out along the theatre floor, whereas it would have been good to have them on the stage in practicality as it would have made them feel really uncomfortable, however with the amount of blackouts we used in the performance, someone could have fallen off of the stage in the audience and we did not want to take this risk, so we left the audience on the ground. Overall we are incredibly proud of how it went as we achieved our aim of making the audience feel uncomfortable, but we would look at what didn't go so well if we were to do this again and change it so that it would work.

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As a group we were rehearsing so much, and it definitely helped us to learn our lines well for the presentation. However for the transcript in the middle of the performance, due to the graphic content we have to cover in it (as it is a rape scene we were doing) it was very difficult to remember lines at times without getting flustered while focusing on the actions and sounds we were making too, as we wanted it to look and sound as believable as possible.

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When we did our tech and dress rehearsal there were mixed feelings about how it went, as some lines were forgetten, especially in the transcript. This made the group members and myself nervous for the actual performance as we really wanted to do well and make people feel uncomfortable within our Artaud piece.

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Two pieces of music that we used was Jolly Old St Nick and The Little Drummer Boy. We used Jolly Old St Nick at the start and end of our performance, the first time the audience thinking they were seeing a piece of Brecht, and the second time as a reminder of what has happened during the performance as they had zero control of what was happening

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Bing Crosby, David Bowie - The Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth

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Music video by Bing Crosby performing The Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth. HLC Properties Ltd., under license to Beach Road Music, LLC

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There were a lot of good ideas for the performance that we were devising, however in the end we decided that we would present it like a game show, where we can add some of the theatre of cruelty techniques within the presentation, so that we could maintain the element of attacking the audiences senses all the way through the piece. We also decided that we would perform a transcript that was played in court that was used to prosecute Ian Brady and Myra, which was the horrific acts that did to Lesley Ann Downy, as they tape recorded it.

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At the start of the process as a group we were unsure on what practitioner we wanted to conduct research into, but after doing an Artaud style workshop and seeing how attacking the senses worked, we decided we wanted to look into Artaud and take the challenge of devising a good Artaud style performance.

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One thing we decided to do as a group is tell the rest of the people that we were going to do a presentation on Brecht, and not Artaud. This is because we thought it would add to the surprise element on the day of the performance. Artaud himself did this, as he told his audience that they were seeing something nice, and instead it was that of their worst dreams.

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During rehearsals we typically used a different space each time to allow us to rehearse whenever we could without having to wait for a specific space to be available, with the first picture being a room at university and the second being a room in a church that we used on a Sunday

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See No Evil is a film that was made based on the Moors murders, and all of the group thought it would be a great idea to watch it. It gave a very good insight into the moors murders and it showed just how evil both Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were. Also, just watching the character of Ian Brady gave me ideas in ways that I could characterise for the performance, as he talks sinister but also like he is full of himself at the same time.

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See No Evil - The Moors Murders - Full Film

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Artaud was inspired by a group of Balinese dancers that he saw at the Paris Colonial Exposition in July 1931. What inspired him was their use of movement, gestures and dance, which Tripney agrees 'began to shape his ideas about gestures and performance' (Tripney 2017).

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A lot of loud, hypnotising and piercing sounds are using within the theatre of cruelty, both technical sounds played through a speaker and sounds made by the actors themselves. This can include the actors moaning, groaning and screaming to give off a creepy or even disturbing vibe to the audience. With theatre of cruelty, sound was very important because dialogue was kept to a minimum. The First Surrealist Manifesto quotes 'We do not intend to do away with dialogue, but to give words something of the significance they have in dreams' (Breton, A, 1924). This means that any the majority of the dialogue that is within a theatre of cruelty piece is a crucial piece of dialogue and would usually intend to have an effect on the audience.

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Lighting within theatre of cruelty used a lot of flooded and pinpointed lighting, which was used to add to the effect of hypnotising the audience during the performance, which is one of the key elements that Artaud wanted to achieve within his style of theatre.

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Surrealism was a cultural movement beginning in the 1920s and is known for the visual artwork and writings from its members. Surrealist work shows an element of surprise and the unexpected, and Artaud was one of the original members of the surrealist movement. He believed that normal theatre removed any illusion and mystery from theatre, as agreed by Archer as she states 'He thought that rational discourse compromised falsehood and illusion' (Archer).
Artaud became fascinated with surrealism from the Avant-Garde movement as he became fascinated by the idea of taking surrealism from fine art and transforming it into performing arts. It was through his connection with surrealism that Artaud became influenced by Alfred Jarry. The first surrealist manifesto quotes that surrealism 'saw madness as a key to perception' (Cooper and Mackey 2002, p.278).

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Artaud was inspired by Alfred Jarry, who was one of his main influences for the theatre of cruelty. Artaud became inspired by Alfred Jarry with his play 'Ubu Roi' in 1896 which was a shock to the theatrical establishments of that time. Cooper and Mackey state that with Ubu Roi the audience were split into two different categories, which were the ones who left after the first word 'Merde' which means 'shit', and the ones who stayed until the end to applaud the performance. (Cooper and Mackey 2002, p.279).

It is through his inspiration for Alfred Jarry that when Artaud formed his first theatre company with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron, he called it the Alfred Jarry theatre.

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Allain, P., Harvie, J. (2006) The Routledge Companion To Theatre and Performance. Abingdon: Routledge.

Archer, R. Surrealist Theatre. [Online] Available from: https://www.scribd.com/doc/24120782/Surrealist-Theatre. [Accessed 12th December 2017].

Breton, A (1924) Manifesto of Surrealism. [Online] Available from: https://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm. [Accessed: 12th December 2017]

Cooper, S., Mackey, S. (2000) Drama and Theatre Studies, New Revised and Expanded Edition. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes Ltd.

Krol, C (2017) How the Moors murders by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley shocked the nation. The Telegraph. [Online] 16th May 2017. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/16/moors-murders-ian-brady-myra-hindley-shocked-nation/. [Accessed 29th November 2017]

Tripney, N (2017). Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty. [Online] Available from: https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/antonin-artaud-and-the-theatre-of-cruelty. [Accessed: 12th December 2017]

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With us choosing to do a piece based on the Moors Murders and choosing a transcript from the actual event, it shows that we have delved into verbatim theatre within our Artaud piece. This is evident as verbatim is known as documentary theatre, and it is the use of real people's words exclusively. This is relevant to our piece because we are using a transcript that was recorded by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley when they were torturing and sexually assaulting Lesley Ann Downey, who was the youngest victim targeted by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. The transcriptwas played in the court as part of the evidence used to sentence Ian and Myra. Krol (2017) states 'Her cries reduces the judge, jury, courtroom spectators and even hardened police officers to tears' (Krol, 2017). This has a lot of relevance to our piece, as with us doing a performance presentation based on Artaud, our aim of the performance is to make the audience feel uncomfortable and to attack their senses, and with the use of this transcript, especially due to the content of the transcript, it will hopefully allow us to achieve our aims.

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I am performing the role of Ian Brady within our Artaud piece, who was of course one of the two Moors murderers. One main change that I am going to make is that with Ian Brady being from Glasgow he would have spoken in a Glaswegian accent, which I have attempted to learn both within rehearsals and outside of rehearsals, however it is not working as well as I would like it to, therefore I will perform this role without the Glaswegian accent so that it does not negatively effect the overall performance in any way.

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Artaud's book 'The Theatre and it's Double' is one of his most famous books that he wrote and it describes key techniques used within the theatre of cruelty.
One of the key things that Artaud wanted to achieve within the theatre of cruelty is that for the audience members he did not want theatre to feel like an escape from the world, but wanted it to be a place where they realize their worst nightmares and deepest fears. Allain and Harvie agree with this by saying 'theatre should recall those moments when we wake from dreams unsure whether the dream's content or the bed we are lying in is our reality' (Allain and Harvie, 2006, p.18)

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As a group we decided to base our theatre of cruelty piece around the Moors Murders. With having a little bit of knowledge on the event already as a group we just had to conduct a lot more research in order to create a performance based on it while using Artaud's theatre style. The Moors murders happened in Manchester between 1963 and 1965, of which there were five victims who were between the ages of 10-17. The five victims were Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Edward Evans, Keith Bennett and Lesley Ann Downey.

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As a group we got together several times a week, even out of hours where we were not timetabled to be in any lectures to discuss ideas for the piece and to rehearse and write a script.

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Theatre of cruelty is a very confrontational theatre style which aims to shock and disturb the audience. One key difference between a modern style piece of theatre and theatre of cruelty is thar Artaud wanted the relationship between the actor and the audience to be intimate, so wanted to remove the space between the two. This meant that audience members would usually be sat on swivel chairs on stage, so they could see everything going on around them, and also it is another form of an attack as they are a lot closer to what is going on, which could make them feel unsafe depending on what is happening within the performance.

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Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and director born in Marseille, France on the 4th of September 1896 and died at age 51 on the 4th of March 1948, allegedly holding his shoe, not long after he was diagnosed with cancer in January 1948.
At the age of five he almost died to a severe case of meningitis, leading to effects from that staying with him for the rest of his life, specifically fear. He spent a large portion of his life in and out of mental institutions and was addicted to opium following an attack of neurasthenia, of which he was given opium as a medication. He suffered from head pains from the age of fourteen and kept suffering from head pains for the rest of his life.

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This padlet is going to discuss Antonin Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty. It will explore a range of different techniques used by Artaud and evaluate how these have been implemented within our performance presentation. In addition to this, my padlet will document the rehearsal process, supported by relevant research and evaluation throughout.