ABSTRACT

Initially, of course,‘avant garde’ was synonymous for‘esoteric’ or‘incomprehensible’. Despite the (scandalized) public attention attracted by their work, Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud remained on the theatrical fringes of their time. Indeed, like Oscar Kokoschka or the dadaists, they consciously chose the role of social outcast as ratifying their counter-culture status, an attitude shared by almost all the members of the movement. But, as we have seen, Jean-Louis Barrault mounted an avant garde takeover of the epitome of establishment theatre; and in some ways his career typifies the avant garde as a whole.