The concept of "theater of cruelty" was produced French actor, poet, philosopher and theatrical figure Antonenom Artaud. The man's tragic fate, he died in 1948, and not waiting in any way large-scale implementation of the plans. However, for the generation of western youth 60s his book "The Theatre and its Double" has become one of the most popular counterculture celebrated as the anticipation of gravity to "underground" to "black" and the beginnings of a secret life, the occult, magic, ecstasy.
Released in 193V year, it opened eerie, a little reminiscent of the style of Edgar Allan Poe story of the king and the plague. Here is a brief of its contents. One night, in the spring of 1730, the King of Sardinia, he saw a strange and terrible dream. He dreamed that he was sick and the plague that ravages the disease is raging his kingdom. Under the blows of the terrible scourge of society breaks down, the order is crumbling, people turn into monsters. King feels like it very lifeblood of sintered coal burning. However, tormented by nightmares, he still realizes that he sees a prophetic dream, and thought his fights over how to avert the inevitable. He wakes up, determined to do it, because the rumors about the plague, coming from the East, already roam the island. On the same day the ship "Saint Anthony the Great," asks for permission to enter the port, and then the king gave the order, which seems outrageous whim of a petty tyrant, is incompatible with any international standards. He ordered the ship away from the immediate coast of Sardinia, otherwise he would be shot out of the coastal artillery guns. "Saint Anthony" should continue to Marseilles, unloaded there - and immediately on his arrival breaks out in a terrible plague has not yet been seen and not described form. So, the ship was carrying the plague, and the king in some special, subtle sense of took it in his sleep. But not only did he gazed in horror picture of the approaching evil - no, he was able to prevent this evil.
The image of the "plague" has become an integral part of the Theater Artaud, the expression of the essence of it. For, according to Artaud, the theater - it's not a place where people indulge in the illusions and empathy. This is - a place and means the deepest and most terrible revelations about the life of commanding power. These forces are cruel, but because the theater has to be cruel. These forces are real, and therefore people in the theater should not empathize with fictional characters, and experience the true horror of contact with the world of hidden - like a king in his sleep.
The nature of these horrible shadows of this world of underground spirits was to Artaud dazzling and dark, "House of Plague", which told him to have medieval chronicles and the "Decameron." Abandoned houses and streets, carts with the bodies that rise up on his father's son, a miser, throws handfuls of gold, a sinner, which turned into a saint, and righteous, desecrating the dead ... All the move, everything has changed its face in light of the "blazing sun" plague. Death and breathes the intoxicating "black freedom."
The plague is in the light of true life, dozing under a film of everyday life. She shakes the human soul, bringing to light all the hidden, repressed it, changing the world and people, it is - the apparition, the peerless, though brutal, the moment of truth. In the same revelation, according to Artaud, and must be genuine theater, theater of the future, as only he can heal the soul with the same brutal, but the power to heal, it heals with a plague.