Early Modern Theatre of Cruelty and its Doubles

Amanda Di Ponio is Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Huron University College in London, Ontario, Canada. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of St Andrews. Her areas of interest include drama and performance, early modern social history, and twentieth-century theory.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Interpreting Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty Foundations: Théâtre Alfred Jarry – Three Influential Events – Elizabethan Dramatic Conventions – Cruelty in the Theatre.- 3. Theatre and Plague: The Doubly Potent Spectacles of Early Modern Culture The Marseilles Plague – Physiological and Psychological Symptoms of Plague – Plague in Early Modern England – The Plague-Theatre – Filth and Infection – Theatre, Contagion, and Ritual.- 4. Bear-baiting and the Theatre of Cruelty The Pit and The Theatre – Elizabethan Receptivity – Jacobean Popularity – The Arena of Ambiguity – From Barbarity to Civility.- 5. Thyestean Savagery: Seneca, the Renaissance, and the Theatre of Cruelty Beyond Recitatio – The Sacrificial Crisis – Contagious Furor and Insatiability – Ritual and Bacchic Theatre – William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus directed by Yukio Ninagawa.- 6. Artaud and the ‘Elizabethans’: Revenge Tragedy as Inspiration for a Theatre of Cruelty An Emblematic Approach to Stage Language – Arden of Faversham Revisited – The True Theatre – The Revenger’s Tragedy – The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi – ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.- 7. Artaud’s Les Cenci From Innocence to Effluence – Les Destructeurs – The Theatre of Cruelty Test.- 8. After Artaud: Peter Brook and The Theatre of Cruelty Season Preparing for a Season of Cruelty – Marat/Sade: On Stage – Marat/Sade: On Screen – Theatre as Cure.- 9. Conclusion.