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
Copyright © Ruta Skendeliene | Year Posted 2016
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