Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

York. Abbie Hoffman in particular often cited The Theater and its Double in his ownwritings. For example, when describing the March on the Pentagon, Hoffman writes that“Artaud is alive at the walls of the Pentagon, bursting the seams of conventional protest,injecting new blood into the peace movement” (Revolution 42). Hoffman and the Yippiesunderstood Artaud’s concept of Theater of Cruelty as a protest against the Establishment,a visionary new performance form that would reveal the false trappings of civilizationand help to radicalize the audience. In Revolution for the Hell of It, Hoffman lists “thedevelopment of a model for an alternative society” as one of the four main Yippieobjectives (102), and he believed that Theater of Cruelty was a useful tool for inspiringthe Yippie masses to a new cultural revolution.In The Theater and its Double, Artaud critiques Western civilization and cultureas tyrannical, producing only a constrained idolatry of canonical great works that historyhas separated from real life. He wanted new, vital art forms that could break through hisperceived disconnect between art and reality. As a theatre practitioner, Artaud argues thattheatre is the perfect form for protesting stultified Western cultural traditions, and foroffering another vision of culture as inseparable from life (9-10). He compares the role oftheatre to that of a plague: a communicative delirium that “affects important collectivitiesand upsets them in an identical way” (27). Theatre can break through the order ofcivilization to touch the collective unconscious, and thereby suggest or create newpossibilities and new ways of seeing the world. Theatre does revelatory work, bringingforth the latent desires and urges of a population (30). In this way theatre works as a182