TEHRAN (IBNA) -- Originally published in 1938 ‘The Theatre and Its Double’ (French Le Théâtre et ‎son Double) by leading French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud which is a collection ‎of his essays has been rendered into Persian. ‎
This work contains Artaud’s most famous works on the theatre, including his manifestos for a Theatre of Cruelty (a break from traditional Western theatre and a means by which artists assault the senses of the audience). It has been translated into Persian by veteran Iranian translator Nasrin Khattat (Ph.D.). Tehran-based Ghatreh Publishing has released ‘The Theatre and Its Double’ 198 pages.
The book was originally published as part of Gallimard’s Métamorpheses Collection in an edition limited to 400 copies. The book consists of Artaud’s collected essays on theatre dating from the early thirties, many of which were published in Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF).
Artaud widely recognized as one of the major figures of the European avant-garde was in “a near catatonic state in the mental hospital of Sainte-Anne” in Paris when the book was finally published. He had been able to correct the text’s proofs between his journeys to Ireland and Mexico.
Artaud intended his work as an attack on theatrical convention and the importance of language of drama, opposing the vitality of the viewer’s sensual experience against theatre as a contrived literary form, and urgency of expression against complacency on the part of the audience.
In one of the essays, ‘No More Masterpieces’, Artaud attacks what he believed to be the elitism of an irrelevant, outdated literary/theatrical canon. He expressed the importance of recovering “the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought”.
Here, Artaud expresses the importance of recovering “the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought” as well.