Precis-Artaud

Artaud's "The Theater and Its Double" antagonizes the reader to consider the role art has taken in current society and to challenge it in order to return art to a more direct and primitive state. According to the reading, too much style and technique has gotten between the spectator and the spectacle. This has occured to the extent that the performance is made obvious and contrived so that the art is existing without any real relevance into the spectators' minds. We see the style of the art and this makes it less genuine so that we aren't able to use our primal senses to deeply connect with the art. "If Shakespeare and his imitators have gradually insinuated the idea of art for art's sake with the art on one side and life on the other, we can rest on this feeble and lazy idea only so long as outside life endures. But there are too many signs that everything used to sustain our lives no longer does so, ... And I call for us to react" (Artaud 77).