The programme Antonin Artaud: A New Century was conceived of as a multi-stage construction, consisting of thematic blocks of an artistic and educational nature. In his artistic manifestos, Artaud continually underlines the necessity of manifesting cultural ideas in action. These words in particular became one of the impulses behind our work; they capture the quintessential nature of the problems of our time, of a culture standing on the border of two centuries as a whole. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz did a great deal so that Artaud would be recognized (many years after his death) as one of the founders of the contemporary avant-garde. By connecting The Meyerhold Centre’s first independent project with the name of Antonin Artaud, we hope to give a live impression of theatrical action back to our audience.
Antonin Artaud left behind neither a philosophical, nor a theatrical system, but nevertheless his ideas had an enormous influence on 20th century theatre. He appears before us as a person who experimented upon his very self and demanded the same of others, as a person who resisted in every way possible all outside attempts at canonisation, who battled with the dictatorship of words. In his art, Artaud strove to surmount “the divide between things and words”, and in essence between life and culture, a divide which transforms the spectator into a passive looker-on, losing his ability for independent thought on the nature of theatre.
The project premiered, with an evening dedicated to the memory of Antonin Artaud as the portrait of a great visionary, at the opening of the experimental programme which The Meyerhold Centre hosted as part of the International Theatrical Olympiad. The project was completed with an international conference on Artaud and Meyerhold.
The following events took place within the framework of the project:
- The premiere of Vladimir Epifantsev’s Macbeth: Bloody Pit of Horror
- The premiere of Valery Fokin’s Artaud and His Double
- The programme Artaud and Grotowski, consisting of master classes and a seminar by the Centre for Study of Jerzy Grotowski’s Work and for Cultural and Theatrical Research in Wroclaw (Poland)
- The premiere of Valery Fokin’s feature film Metamorphosis
- The programme Artaud and Cinematographers, consisting of lectures and screenings of the films Children of the Third Reich, Napoleon, Joan d’Arc, Un Chien Andalou, and others
- The lecture cycle Master and Us
- A tour of the Berliner Ensemble, performing Artaud and Hitler in a Roman Café
- The premiere of Vasily Senin’s staging of Roberto Zucco by B.-M. Koltès
- The programme Bernard-Marie Koltès and Didier Sandre within the framework of the project Un Acteur, Un Auteur run by l’Association Française d'Action Artistique (AFAA) and in partnership with le Centre Culturel Français
- The premiere of J. Montvilaite’s staging of Parasites
- A showing of Yuri Urnov’s laboratory piece The Mirror Carp
- The premiere of The School of Fools, created by Nikolai Roshchin and the theatrical collective Ship of Fools
