(22) The abracadabrant story of the Moon Child

“We can no longer continue to prostitute the idea of theatre, which has value only through a magical, atrocious connection with reality and with danger. […]
Thus posed, the question of theatre must awaken general attention, it being understood that theatre, through its physical aspect, and because it demands expression in space—the only real expression in fact—allows the magical means of art and speech to be exercised organically and in their entirety, like renewed exorcisms. […]
That is to say, instead of reverting to texts regarded as definitive and sacred, it is above all necessary to break theatre’s subjugation to the text and to recover the notion of a kind of unique language, halfway between gesture and thought.”

 

Antonin Artaud, Premier manifeste du Théâtre de la cruauté, dans Le Théâtre et son double

 

 

 

“There are places where truth is not performed, but where it undoes you. It may be that true theatre tells nothing: it seizes you, yet at the same time withdraws you, and, without you feeling anything in the moment, it burns you. There is a threshold that passes without a sign. There, as in the garden of the Enfant Lune, one does not cross symbols; one is crossed by them. No one leaves unscathed a place that cannot be understood, yet transforms you. This is not a staging: it is a birth.

— This burning theatre resembles it… yet… is not an allegory. It is the event itself, says the Enfant Lune. As in that garden where man does not stroll: he loses himself there in order to be truly born.”