Interview with Ros Murray
Full Interview here
Dr. Ros Murray has held research posts at the University of Manchester and Queen Mary University of London, where she taught in French and film, before starting at King’s College, London as a lecturer in 2016.
Ros’ research interests lie broadly in 20th and 21st century visual culture, critical theory, queer theory and feminism. She works on avant-garde, experimental and documentary film and video. Her book Antonin Artaud: The Scum of the Soul explored how Artaud’s work combined different media (theatre, film, drawings, notebooks and manifestos) in relation to the body.
Email ros.murray@kcl.ac.uk
Connections to the GCSE, AS and A level specifications
- Theatrical style
- Artistic intentions
- Social, cultural, political and historical context
- Significant moments in the development of theory and practice
- Influence
- Key collaborations with other artists
PC: Artaud had a brief time with the Surrealists. Did he start a theatre with them?
RM: Yes, the Théâtre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron in 1926. The theatre was one of the things that caused him to fall out with the Surrealists. He got involved with the Surrealists in 1924. André Breton was the mastermind behind Surrealism; he was quite an authoritative figure; he was always kicking people out of the movement. Breton started getting much more interested in Communism and Marxism. Artaud was not into politics at all, writing things like: ‘I shit on Marxism.’ He wrote that he was against any kind of ideology, which meant that he was against ideas basically. He didn’t think Surrealism should be politicised in terms of aligning itself with political movements or ideas. At the same time, Breton was becoming very anti-theatre because he saw theatre as being bourgeois and anti-revolutionary. Artaud was trying to get funding from various people for his theatre projects and Breton didn’t like that because he thought that it was too bourgeois. Breton was also really interested in Freud but Artaud was absolutely anti-psychoanalysis, anti-anything remotely Freudian. It is interesting that in public they fell out and wrote texts against each other but actually they remained friends. Breton was quite key in getting Artaud moved to Rodez. He helped him to get out of the psychiatric hospital and raised money for him at the end of his life. Actually, I think what was really happening was that Breton was afraid Artaud went too far. The surrealists were more about ideas and about this kind of disruption to a certain extent but if someone was actually mad and dangerous they couldn’t handle it.
PC: Did they see Artaud as dangerous?
RM: Yes. There is an interview with Breton where he talks, in retrospect, about Artaud where he talks about language “glistening”, but he says with Artaud it was glistening like a weapon. Breton contrasts Artaud’s vision to Aragon’s, who was a Surrealist poet, who wrote about a “wave of dreams”, whereas Artaud was talking about something much more violent.
PC: Would you say his ideas were violent? I know the word cruelty is key but doesn’t necessarily have a simple meaning for Artaud. What would you say he meant by cruelty?
RM: It is difficult to grasp. The first thing that you could say is that it is not about gratuitous violence as you might think about it normally. He used the expression “the metaphysics of cruelty”. It is really about disrupting. It is also to do with a very physical engagement. Not necessarily a physical violence. You can think about it in terms of cruelty to language: to concepts, to ideas, to representation. By cruelty he means life: life itself. Life in his theatre writings is absolutely not everyday life as we live it. Life is a threshold between reality and the dark forces behind it. The real essence of life is the energy that exists at this threshold.
PC: Would he explore that threshold through the body and through bodily experience?
RM: Yes. The other way to think about the threshold actually is to think about his interest in magic. Again this kind of magic that is a physical force behind things, that makes things happen. He talks about acting but not in the terms of acting a role. In French there are two words: there is ‘jouer’ which is act, what you would normally use to say ‘act a role’; then there is another one, which is ‘agir’ – it means a kind of physical act, an act in its very basic sense. He always uses the word ‘agir’ rather than ‘jouer’. He talks about cruelty as something that acts (agir) not in the sense that it performs a role (jouer) but that it actually physically acts. It acts in the same way that magic would act upon something, it would change something, it would transform something.
PC: The term ‘act’ or ‘action’ seems to be one that comes up for lots of practitioners as an important one to define and differentiate.
Full Interview here
Summary
- Artaud founded the Théâtre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron in 1926. André Breton came to dislike the theatre.
- Artaud was not into politics at all.
- Artaud was absolutely anti-psychoanalysis, anti-anything remotely Freudian.
- Breton thought Artaud was dangerous and that his language glistened like a weapon.
- Theatre of Cruelty was not about gratuitous violence as you might think about it normally.
- Cruelty is really about disrupting.
- Cruelty meant a physical engagement. A cruelty to language: to concepts, to ideas, to representation.
- Artaud talks about cruelty as something that acts (agir) not in the sense that it performs a role (jouer) but that it actually physically acts.
