Precis: The Theater and Its Double

Atraud's The Theatre and Its Double describes in detail his aim and call for transformation of the psychological theatre to the "theatre of cruelty." In Atraud's new theatre the distance between spectator and spectacle diminishes to that of a highly and involuntarily responsive subject as it would respond, or synthesize, within a system as described by in van Gelder's dynamical systems approach. He sees such the drastic change from psychological to sensual engagement as necessary because of a pervasive distance between spectator and spectacle maintained in then current theatre, rendering the spectacle inauthentic, and obsolete to its audience.
Atraud outlines in his manifesto how this transformation should occur. He emphasizes the power of noise, specifically, for its sensational power, as in reverberation, that informs the body more so than the symbolic and obsolete "meaning" of the noise. Sense is of the utmost importance in Atraud's "Theatre of Cruelty," because his theatre is not for the individual, but for the masses, which share as a common denominator not psychology, but reflexes and reactions based on physical sense.