Antonin Artaud Biography

Antonin Artaud was a playwright for very few plays during his lifetime, but he exercised a considerable amount of influence with his small collection of works. He was a great French playwright and also became known for his theoretical writings. He was briefly involved with the Surrealist movement in the early years of his career, which influenced a number of his works. He decided very early on that a new type of theatre was required, thereby transfiguring his famous, ‘Theater of Cruelty’ idea, which added importance on manuscript and on the primordial expressions of movement, light and sound combined. His plays were usually centered on human behavior and raw human emotions, many of which were jeered at and even dismissed by a number of people. Apart from being as a playwright, he was also an actor, artist, designer and director. He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to periodicals like the journal, ‘Litterature’. Some of his significant pieces of work include, ‘Art and Death and ‘The Theatre and its Double’, through which he forwarded the ideas for the creation of a new genre of theatre, that he hoped would change the perceptions of the-then theatrical experiences.