Professor
Tracey
Eve
Winton
and
her
2B
Cultural
History
class
are
proud
to
present
the
2015
Ico
play,
The
Mirror
State,
an
original
script,
which
will
be
performed
at
60
Main
Street,
Cambridge,
at
7:30
pm,
August
6,
7,
and
8,
2015.
Since
the
show
sold
out
entirely,
we
have
now
added
a
matinée
performance
on
Friday
August
7
at
1
pm
(doors
open
12:30
pm)
for
which
tickets
may
be
reserved
by
emailing info.uwarchplay2015@gmail.com.
It’s
1931.
We’re
in
Surrealist
era
Paris
—
a
world
boiling
over
with
odd
juxtapositions
and
startling
contrasts
—
for
the
opening
of
the
Exposition
Coloniale
Internationale,
a
grand
exhibition
of
foreign
arts,
reproducing
at
full
scale
and
architectural
detail
many
of
the
world’s
most
sensational
buildings,
including
the
Great
Temple
of
Angkor
Wat.
Most
Surrealist
artists
boycotted
the
controversial
expo,
but
one
famous
dramatist,
actor,
writer
and
artist,
was
drawn
to
its
rich
and
curious
cultures.
In
August
that
year,
at
the
Dutch
pavilion,
he
watched
a
wordless
drama
of
gesture
performed
by
a
troupe
of
Balinese
dancers.
Shaken
with
inspiration,
he
conceived
a
modern
dramatic
form
that
returned
to
the
body
to
restore
the
rawness
and
blood
ritual
that
western
decadence
had
stripped
from
theatre
and
replaced
by
spoken
language.
This is the story of Antonin Artaud, whose experience of psychosis later brought him into the hands of one of the twentieth century's most famous psychoanalysts, Dr. Jacques Lacan, for 11 months in a Paris asylum. Lacan and Artaud were brilliant but difficult men, both former Surrealists, both working on problems of language and communication, and soon became antagonists for one another.
The story unfolds as Artaud, working with friends, all major figures of the era, rehearses a new work of theatre based on the early detective story by Edgar Allan Poe that fascinated both him and Lacan, “The Purloined Letter.” This is experimental theatre, modern theatre, as first proposed by Artaud himself: not an after-dinner entertainment, but rather a ‘theatre of cruelty’ intended to ‘awaken’ the audience into an existential experience in a physical language properly theatre’s own expressive form, and an enquiry into the relationship between fiction and reality.