BARRAULT AND ARTAUD
with its goings and comings." In the
Hamlet
production a sound
introduces each appearance of the ghost-very much as in oriental
usage. From the audience a ringing seems to rise inside one's head and
the drumbeat is indistinguishable from one's pulse. The growing
sensation of a supernatural presence strengthens with the heightening
of the pitch and loudness until the ghost appears. But the produc–
tion of
The Trial
goes furthest in this respect. On the one hand, the
mechanical sounds of typewriter and bells correspond to the rhythm
of the Machine Age; on the other, the chaotic human sounds of
mumbling voices mixed with groaning and breathing as in a dream
correspond to the hero's own subconscious. Barrault seems to be
capable of reproducing by sounds the very tension of a guilt-feeling.
Artaud is particularly violent about the way the possibilities of
the human voice are ignored by the Western theater. "Today in the
theater the dialogue is everything and there is no possibility outside of
it; so that the theater becomes a branch of literature, a sort of reso–
nant variety of language." He proposes that we abolish naturalistic
dialogue and return to a primitive use of words, "consider language
as a form of incantation." Perhaps this has something to do with
the reappearance of monologues in many recent French productions.
In Dullin's production of Salacrou's
La Terre est Ronde,
Savonarola,
as a tremendous door above . the stage opens, appears and, looking
scornfully down over the city, speaks to God, to Florence, or to
himself. Jouvet's production of Giraudoux's
La Folle de Chaillot
is
interrupted in the middle by a simple little statement or declaration
of piety given by the young waitress. In Maurice
J
aquement's fine
production of Lorca's
Maison de Bernarda
the cr.azy grandmother
appears near the end and curses her house while performing a sort
of magic dance. The monologue, coming at a high pitch in the play,
is by its very nature close to either prayer or incantation. The actor,
forced into communication with the audience, himself, or something
supernatural, assumes the role of high priest and his language is like
the language of alchemy. Barrault is particularly conscious of the
actor's voice. In the
Hamlet
production the ghost gives separate life
to his words, the terrible tools of a sorcerer; the actor's first speech,
done in the exaggerated style of the Comedic Franc;aise, has the
savage quality of a crying beast. Ophelia chants her final song as a
brutal nursery-rhyme jingle. In every case the actor's voice plunges
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