« Artaud: un portrait en décomposition » began as a theatrical adaptation of the poetry and letters of French poet, actor, surrealist and mad man Antonin Artaud. My initial work on the project was carried out at Le LABO with a grant from the OAC’s program « Jets de théâtre ». Artaud’s writings and ideas often defy conventional theories and practices of performance and interpretation and my research was carried out with this in mind.
For this residency I would like to concentrate on deepening this experimentation with voice, body and text by integrating music and recording technology (specifically looping pedals, amplification and sampling) with the live performer.
I want to explore all the possibilities that the human body has for producing sounds.
And the most important question: once the creative « pallet » of the body is broadened in terms of sounds it can produce, how can we then use these discoveries in the performance of poetic texts by Artaud? How can this new technologically « amplified » voice and body act as a conduit for the text? Or to put it another way how can the performer avoid imposing a psychological « interpretation » on the text and instead make themself into a « chamber of resonance » through which the text can be transmitted to the audience?