ABSTRACT
When critics discuss the use of ritual in contemporary drama or avant garde directors describe their attempts to rediscover the primitive ritual function of theatre, Artaud’s name is usually the first to be mentioned. Although he can hardly be said to have initiated the trend, with Artaud the focus on dreams and the primitive levels of the psyche becomes extended to include savage roots and primitive culture. Expressionist painters like Nolde had already turned to African sculpture for inspiration. However, Artaud was the first to search for theatrical forms that would not only be non-European, but also specifically‘uncivilized’ (as distinct from Strindberg’s thematic borrowing from Indian religion, or Yeats’ imitation of the Japanese Nōh as a‘noble’ and highly refined art). And what impressed him about the Balinese dance-drama was‘the instinctive survival of magic’ in what he mistakenly believed were involuntary and visionary gestures. In his view these caused‘the movement of religious terror which seized the crowds at the Paris Colonial Exhibition’. This was the effect he aimed at; and he believed that both his Théâtre Alfred Jarry and the Balinese theatre‘fed off the true magical sources of the same primitive unconscious’.1
