ABSTRACT
Here the author examines Kantor’s chief productions (the trilogy of The Theater of Death, I shall Never Return and Today is my Birthday), as well as his writings that constitute his meta-psychology of theater. Positioning himself “at the border” between illusion and the “Real,” Kantor conducts a séance summoning the spirits of the dead that will, in the end, always return to their shadowy existence behind the DOOR. Each production is a danse macabre, a ritual of death, a re-play of a “primal murder,” the human tragedy brought into poignant relief by the burlesque. His is an intimate theater of an irreparable loss, never comprehended, never accepted. Memory betrays, never fills the gap. Yet, the spectator is drawn into a movement towards a gradual integration of the dispersed fragments of the self. However, such an organization can only be fully achieved under the sign of Death, the sole Actor.
