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SCENE ONE
We open on a darkened stage.
Then, we hear the voice over of
Antonin Artaud.
ANTONIN (V.O.)
I can't die, I can't keep living, I can't want to die or live.
(Beat.)
ANTONIN (V.O.)
I'm an abyss… an absolute abyss.
(Beat.)
ANTONIN (V.O.)
You must be ready, as I am, to burn whatever imitates life.
(Lights up on Antonin Artaud.
He's sitting on his bed in a
psychiatric hospital. He's
glancing up at the ceiling.)
(A moment.)
(Doctor enters.)
DOCTOR.
Artaud, I think, you have
worsened this time, huh? We need
to change the treatment.
ANTONIN
I
beg you, please; I beg you to
remember your true soul and
understand that another series of
electroshocks will annihilate me.
DOCTOR
Well, I'm thinking about your recuperation.
ANTONIN
I
always wanted to take you inside
my poetry. But unfortunately, you
don't believe it.
DOCTOR
I never denied your poetry.
ANTONIN
Something from my inner world
escapes you, and you get mad at
me for confronting other people.
DOCTOR
You're pissing me off with that crap.
ANTONIN
The poet's mystical states
are not a manifestation of
delirium, sir, they are the basis
of his poetry.
DOCTOR
Don't say that, Artaud. You are destroying your reason!
ANTONIN
You've see me as a
hallucinating man… you do
that because you refuse yourself
to get my poetic worth. I've
been suffering since I was five
years old because of the
wonderful world that exists
inside me.
DOCTOR
Your mind is disturbed. Open your
eyes, Artaud. I'm sick of your
craziness. You have no sense. I
shouldn't be talkin' to you. I'm
a doctor! I define who's mad and
who's not.
ANTONIN
A
madman is also a man whom society
did not want to hear and whom it
wanted to prevent from uttering
certain intolerable truths.
(The doctor cries out for
someone. Two nurses enter. They
prepare Artaud for another series
of electroshocks.)
DOCTOR
I'm sorry, Artaud.
Unfortunately, I need to
intensify the treatment. You are
tormented by reason and being a
poet, perhaps you can lose your
sensitivity.
(They start the electroshock session on Artaud. He yells in despair.)
ANTONIN
It's from this admirable
suffering of being that I draw my
poems and my songs
DOCTOR
You're a dangerous man for
society, but, I believe,
you're the most dangerous for
me. I hate to say this, but
you're a man of honor. An
admirable man of the purest
concept.
ANTONIN
Every poet is a seer!
(He gets more electroshocks.)
ANTONIN
How's it that what you like
about my work doesn't make
you like the same thing that
exists in me as characters that I
am?
DOCTOR
I'm sorry for me, and for you.
(More electroshocks. Artaud screams.)
DOCTOR
I'm really sorry for everything that separates us.
ANTONIN
(Moaning in pain.)
I believe in heaven, Doctor, even though I don't believe in hell!
DOCTOR
Give up and die full of unhappiness.
ANTONIN
I'm not sure you want that.
DOCTOR
I just wanted to help you.
ANTONIN
(Crying a lot)
I believe in heaven! I don't believe in hell!
(Doctor stops the electroshock.)
(There's a long pause.)
DOCTOR
I gotta go, Artaud.
(Doctor packs his things.)
DOCTOR
You're a radical man. You don't
realize that you can't bring art
to life without transforming it.
That's the reason you're
here.
ANTONIN
This is why a tainted society has
invented psychiatry to defend
itself against the investigations
of certain superior intellects
whose faculties of divination
would be troublesome.
DOCTOR
You have no choice. You doomed yourself! Goodbye, Antonin Artaud!
(Doctor waves to nurses.)
DOCTOR
Let's go.
(Doctor and the nurses leave.)
(Artaud, with some difficulty,
gets up from his bed, picks up a
shoe, sits down on the bed, and
places the shoe on his lap.)
ANTONIN
If our life lacks a constant
magic it is because we choose to
observe our acts and lose
ourselves in consideration of
their imagined form and meaning,
instead of being impelled by
their force.
(Artaud rises to his feet on the
bed, holding his shoe before him.
He gets the shoe upward as if it
is a trophy.)
ANTONIN
No one has ever written, painted,
sculpted, modeled, built, or
invented except literally to get
out of hell.
(Artaud falls down on the bed, holding his shoe in his hand.)
Blackout.
A sentence is projected onto a screen:
"4 March 1948 in a
psychiatric hospital in
Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris, Antonin
Artaud was found dead in his bed
with a shoe in his hand."
END
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