Artaud, Antonin - Charles Gattnig Jr. (essay date December 1968)
Charles Gattnig Jr. (essay date December 1968)
“Artaud and the Participatory Drama of the Now Generation,” in Educational Theater Journal, Vol. 20, No. 29, December, 1968, pp. 485-91.
[In the following essay, Gattnig shows Artaud's influence on the de-emphasis of text and the convention of a passive audience in the theater of the late 1960s.]
Some recent visitors to New York's theatres have been surprised and shocked by the kind of involvement required of them in the productions they merely came to view. The audience (which seems to dress less and less formally) is bedazzled by electric equipment: amplifiers scream; strobe lights flash; technicolor slides are projected on the walls and on the audience. The actors perform the play by moving through, over, and around the spectators. There are frequent, and often successful, attempts made by the performers to communicate with the spectators in a personal and non-illusory manner. Language...
[The entire page is 4010 words long]
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