Antonin Artaud Theater of Cruelty Or Joie De Vivre Part 2

He remembered the day Before he was exhausted And his soul was very sick He was suicidal that night But when he woke up From his nightmarish dream His soul was not hurting Anymore and felt clean He came back to Paris thinking He was healed and free of pain His head was full of bold ideas And his heart was beating fast He was ready to change The matters of the old stage He thought theater can do The same magical things That shamans did in the Mountains of Mexico to him To transform human into a new Being that is free from pain And ready for a drastic healing change Being exposed to torture and fear That can be inflicted by magic of stage So he destroyed the old stage And built a new one instead He equipped it with deus ex machina Thundering with strange sounds Crammed with images of violent Physical forces that destroy and crush Hypnotize unsuspecting spectator Seized by the magic of the stage And whirlwind of mental forces Experiencing intense theatrical pain Induced by elaborated torture Magic tricks gestures ghostly lights Articulations of powerful insights In to the secrets of hidden mysteries Behind the veil of reality of everyday Where Cenci was raping his daughter To open her eyes to the cruelty of life And laughed at her when she begged For mercy and cried for escape Artaud believed the magic will work On the stage immersed in the real torture Themes of rape, sacrifice, and murder Will shock the audience and confront With the basic elements of life He remembered how Don Juan Transformed his soul and taught him to fly With magical mushroom peyote Which Artaud come to believe to be A true double of theater of cruelty That he was creating To advance the power of a theater shaman He got a walking stick made of the wood that had knotted design all over its surface And a magic power of evil and good Like a baton in the hands of conductor Artaud thought he could change The world through the prism of stage With the magic stick of the wood That had smiling scary faces staring And incantations carved on it For the rest of his life he tried To perfect shamanic mastery To bring the change he was Dreaming of on the stage of life After years of experimenting With cruelty and magic on the stage He was very lonely and misunderstood Confined in his cruel double theater cage His brilliant but sick mind did not find A fertile ground on Paris stage