Svatý Artaud

Saint Artaud is a monograph on Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), a French theatre theorist, director, actor, poet and writer, a leading figure in the cultural life of the first half of the 20th century, who influenced and still influences the further development of European theatre, and whose legacy has been championed by Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski. The book summarizes and contextualizes Artaud's vision contained in The Theatre and its Double and in other texts, his search for forms of theatre that would be a cure for - according to Artaud - a sick humanity, a sick world. It reveals and comments on the paradoxes associated with his personality and his work: Artaud is a visionary who himself never realized his visions; an inspirer of countless theatre-makers who himself realized eight productions - unsuccessful and unaccepted; a penetrating critic of the human and social condition, which society has relegated to a madhouse. Moreover, most of those who considered themselves his followers copied superficial ideas about him without understanding the essence of his ideas. One of the fundamental themes of the book is the holy fools in history, the holy madness, in which the ideal of an internally free, authentically expressing man not separated from the world, nature, the universe is fulfilled, a holy madness that is unacceptable to society and usually ends in an unholy, destructive madness. The work is written from the perspective of Artaud's trip to Mexico in 1936, a turning point in his life, a last attempt to find the realization of his visions in the traditions and culture of the indigenous Indians - before the definitive onset of mental illness.