Um pesquisador nascido no Brasil em 1990 se depara com as cartas que Antonin Artaud escreveu durante seu período de internação no asilo de alienados de Rodez, na França, e descobre que chegou ao mundo arruinado. Decide não ignorar que sente uma imensa solidão e que, na maioria das vezes, se vê sozinho neste sentimento; que cresceu fingindo prazer e sentindo saudade, mas que já está desanimado até mesmo para sofrer; que a primeira coisa que disse, quando ainda era um bebê, foi: \"Olá, mamãe, eu já sei que você não sou eu, então estou livre!\" - e todos os adultos aplaudiram o espírito inteligente do menino que iria longe. Este pesquisador que nunca foi à Europa, mas está educado a falar com muita lucidez sobre qualquer matéria disponível no Eu e no além-Eu, recebeu três volumes de cartas escritas por Antonin Artaud, quem está morto há setenta anos, e começou então a ouvir dois tipos de silêncio: um que se estende por toda a superfície acima do palavrório, nasce sobre ele e preenche como neblina o espaço entre as ruínas, um silêncio compactuado; e um outro que grita impessoalmente na imensa falta de fundo abaixo das palavras. Não tem escolha: sente necessidade de partir, deseja esquecer Artaud. Ele se atrasa, porque segue com o corpo e abandona o espírito; leva o espírito, deixa cair a língua. Decide agarrar tudo o que vê pelo caminho, leva todas as palavras que encontra pela frente, para despejá-las no abismo de um silêncio público. E as páginas do presente trabalho são este movimento entre dois silêncios, um caminho de palavras arrastadas que ninguém poderá seguir, porque o pesquisador desapareceu sobre si mesmo. / A researcher born in Brazil in 1990 faces letters Antonin Artaud wrote during his internment period in the asylum of alienated of Rodez, in France, and finds out that he came into this world ruined. He decides not to ignore that he feels an immense solitude and that, most of the time, sees himself alone in this feeling; that he grew faking pleasure and feeling nostalgia, but is already too down-hearted even for suffering; that the first thing he said, when he was still a baby, was: \"Hello, mommy, I already know that you are not me, so I am free!\" - and all the adults applauded the clever spirit of the boy who would go far. This researcher that never went to Europe, but is educated to speak very lucidly about any available subject in the \"l\" and the beyond-\"I\", received three volumes of letters written by Antonin Artaud, who has been dead for sixty years, and started to listen to two kinds of silence: one that extends through all surface above the chatter, that is born over it, that fills the space between the ruins like a mist, an agreed silence; and another one that screams impersonally in the immense lack of bottom under the words. There is no choice: he feels the need to leave, wishes to forget Artaud. He gets late, because he follows with his body and abandons the spirit; he takes the spirit, lets his tongue fall down. He decides to grasp everything that he sees through the way, takes every words he finds ahead, in order to pour them into the abyss of a public silence. And the pages of the present work are this movement between two silences, a path of dragged words that no one will be able to follow, because the researcher disappears over himself.

Le corps est l’élément qui s’impose pour aborder l'oeuvre de Valère Novarina. Certes, l’auteur traite d'autres thèmes (politique, télévision, etc.) mais le corps reste sa préoccupation centrale. L’approche du corps novarinien semble s’inscrire dans des traditions qu’on peut faire remonter à l’antiquité et qu’on peut aussi la rattacher à une certaine modernité (Jarry, Artaud, etc). Valère Novarina met en avant des notions originales. Une animalité présentée de façon positive, la pantinitude de l’acteur et la sainteté paradoxale de Louis de Funès. Le corps bizarre et étranger est très présent dans son oeuvre : un corps surhumain et très humain en même temps. Le côté mystique du corps novarinien nous renvoie à la Bible et aux Ecritures Saintes : il redessine les figures de l’histoire biblique (Adam, Job, Moïse) et la vie de Jésus depuis sa naissance jusqu’à sa résurrection d’une manière très originale. Nous sommes là devant un sujet délicat qui fait débat et qui concerne chacun de nous : la dualité entre le corps et l’âme. Les réflexions sur la finalité du corps novarinien nous ont conduits à découvrir une certaine spécificité du corps de l’acteur : importance du vide, corps-offrande et parenté entre la scène et le sacré. / Body appeared as a crucial element in any approach of Valère Novarina’s work. Certainly, the author is interessed by many other themes –politics, television,etc…– however body remains his central preoccupation. Novarian vision of the body,seems to belong to a traditional perception of it – coming from Antiquity– which could also be linked to a certain modernity –Jarry, Artaud, etc. Valère Novarina highlights creative/ original notions. An animality illustrated through a positive way,the « pantinitude » of the actor and the paradoxical saintliness of Louis de Funès.The strange and unfamiliar body is strongly present in his work : a super human body and at the same time a really human one. The mystical aspect of the Novarian body indicates references to Bible and Holly Scriptures : he draws again historical figures of the Bible (Adam, Job, Moses) and the life of Jesus, from his birth to his ressurrection, through a highly original style/ way. We are here in front of a delicate topic, subject to debate and which concernes each of us : the duality between body and soul. Reflexions on the finality of the Novarian body lead us to discover a certain specificity of the actor body : importance of a vacuum/emptiness, body offerring andkinship/ relationship between scene and sacred.

Contemporains capitaux, mythifiés de leur vivant, Artaud et Brecht sont morts en ignorant tout l’un de l’autre. Ce tandem imaginaire s’est néanmoins vu érigé en grand antagonisme de l’avant-garde. Au dualisme théâtral Cruauté vs Distanciation se sont superposées les confrontations esthétiques (performance vs brechtisme), politiques (situationnistes vs staliniens), idéologiques (transgression libertaire vs totalisation marxiste), philosophiques (critique postmoderne vs rationalisme occidental).Par-delà cette réduction instrumentale à deux machines de guerre théoriques adverses, un enjeu essentiel unit pourtant Brecht et Artaud : comment changer le monde ou la vie ? De cette Révolution infinie dont le théâtre n’est qu’un aspect, cette thèse explore les sens par la comparaison de leurs œuvres complètes en croisant littérature, philosophie et politique. Au-delà d’options divergentes, Artaud et Brecht partagent des problèmes, des rejets, des axes. I. Mythologies. Artaud et Brecht traquent la Révolution en brûlant ses mythes : embraser la terre (destruction, dégénérescence, décadence) ; changer la vie (paganisme, anarchismes, avant-gardes) ; transformer le monde (marxisme, indianisme). II. Pathologies. Pour éradiquer la contre-Révolution et canaliser la flambée des masses, ils attaquent la diversion religieuse, l’abrutissement par l’emprise (sexuelle, occulte, idéologique), et la domination (de l’inertie à la fureur fasciste). III. Philosophies & Dramaturgies. Dans le creuset du théâtre, sur deux scènes ontologiques, Brecht et Artaud forgent leurs Révolutions comme saut, dépassement, renversement et commencement. De leur géniale traversée, reste le brasier révolutionnaire de l’œuvre. / Artaud and Brecht, contemporaries transformed into mythological figures during their own life-times, died without having any knowledge of one another. They became, however, an imaginary couple, as it were, the two great antagonists of the avant-garde. The duality they represented —theatre of cruelty vs. theatre of alienation— acquired further meanings: aesthetic (performance vs. brechtian), political (situationist vs. stalinist), ideological (libertarian transgression vs. Marxist totalisation), and philosophic (post-modernist critique vs. western rationalism).Nevertheless, beyond the polemics, one essential concern united Brecht and Artaud: How to change the world and life? This thesis explores the meanings of that infinite revolution of which the theatre is but one aspect, by comparing their oeuvre as literature, philosophy, and politics. Their positions differed, but Artaud and Brecht shared the same problems and terms of discussion, and rejected the same solutions.I. Mythologies: Both of them pursued revolution while attacking its myths: setting the world alight (destruction, degeneracy, decadence); changing life (paganism, anarchism, the avant-gardes), transforming everything (Marxism, indianism).II. Pathologies: in order to resist Counter-Revolution and focus the ardour of the masses, they attack religion as a diversion; sexual, occult and ideological brutalisation; and all forms of domination (from passivity to fascist frenzy).III. Philosophies and dramaturgies: It is in the theatre that Artaud and Brecht forged their revolutions in the form of great leaps forward, reversals and new beginnings.What remains of their work is its incandescent revolutionary core.

Le but de la présente thèse est de retracer le changement théorique qu’a réalisé Antonin Artaud de la notion du moi, et par là d'éclairer la poétique particulière qu’il a établie à la fin de sa vie. La 1ère partie focalise ses premiers écrits et surtout la maladie dans laquelle il ne pouvait penser. Qu’est-ce que l’impossibilité de penser ? Pour lui cette maladie n’est qu’un dysfonctionnement psychologique. Sa maladie consiste à son incapacité de faire correspondre rétrospectivement sa pensée intérieure aux paroles extériorisées. A l’époque le moi artaldien restait minimisé. Il s’agit dans la 2e partie de la théorie du théâtre qu’il développait toute sa vie. Certes sa théorie reste cohérente en ce sens qu’il s’agit toujours de la relation entre le texte et l’acteur. Mais dans les années 30 comme le texte fonctionne comme un double qui hante le moi de l’acteur et lui demande tel ou tel acte, le texte se trouve toujours antérieur à l’acteur. Par contre, dans les années 40, Artaud n’accepte plus l’antériorité du texte par rapport à l’acteur, ce qui rend impossible le théâtre au sens ordinaire du terme. La 3e partie aborde l’hypertrophie du moi artaldien. Or cette centralité du moi artaldien n’est pas un solipsisme car ce n’est que rétrospectivement qu’il peut dire « tout est sorti de moi ». Cette rétrospectivité lui permet de développer sa propre poétique à travers la lecture des Chimères de Nerval où il établit un nouveau sujet littéraire : sujet de lecture qui domine rétrospectivement l’espace poétique. L’hypertrophie du moi n’est point un symptôme de la schizophrénie, mais un support théorique à la poésie contemporaine, comme la poésie sonore ou littéraliste. / The purpose of the present thesis is to redraw Antonin Artaud's theoretical change of the notion of the ego, and to clarify the particular poetics that he established at the end of his life. The 1st part of the thesis focuses his early writings and especially the disease by which he could not think. What is the impossibility to think? For him this disease is only a psychological dysfunction. His disease consists in his incapacity to make, afterward, his internal thought correspond to the exteriorized words. At the time Artaud's ego remained minimized. In 2nd part, it is a matter of the theory of theater that he developed all his life. While his theory remains coherent in the sense that it is always about the relation between the text and the actor. But in the 30s as the text works as a double that haunts the ego of the actor and asked him a particular act, the text is always previous to the actor. On the other hand, in the 40s, Artaud does not accept any more the anteriority of the text with regard to the actor, what makes impossible the theater for the common sense of the term. The 3rd part approaches the hypertrophy of Artaud's ego. But this centrality of the ego is not solipsism because it is only afterward that he can say "everything went out of me". This rétrospectivité allows him to develop his own poetics through the reading of Les Chimères of Nerval where he establishes a new literary subject: subject of reading which dominates afterward the poetic space. This hypertrophy of the ego is not a symptom of the schizophrenia, but a theoretical support in the contemporary poetry, as the sound poetry or literalist poetry.

La correspondance d’Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) occupe une place essentielle dans ses écrits. Elle montre sans doute mieux que ses autres textes la singularité de son expression. Cette thèse examine le rôle joué par sa correspondance, rôle dont on admet l’importance mais encore insuffisamment exploré. À partir de la publication de la Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière (1924), commencée à la suite du refus de Rivière de publier les poèmes d’Artaud, celui-ci publie lettres ou textes épistoliers comme si cela pouvait remplacer ses œuvres dans lesquelles il n’arrive pas à exprimer sa réalité à cause de la maladie dont il souffre : il refuse les œuvres « détachée[s] de la vie » et croit pouvoir mieux s’exprimer dans les lettres. L’expression épistolière est pour lui un moyen de faire entendre le « cri même de la vie » et de lutter contre « un sentiment de gratuité ». Toutefois, il n’est pas évident que, bien qu’elle soit ancrée dans des situations réelles, la correspondance puisse fonctionner comme Artaud le souhaite; il s’avère plutôt qu’elle a pour lui un statut ambigu dans les années 1920 et 1930. Le chapitre 1 aborde ce problème sous deux aspects : l’authenticité et la temporalité. Dans ses lettres, on constate qu’Artaud se plaint très souvent de l’incompréhension de ses destinataires vis-à-vis de sa douleur; ses lettres n’en garantissent pas, pour eux, l’authenticité et l’équivoque y revient sans cesse. Pour lui, l’authenticité doit être prouvée par l’adéquation de l’écriture épistolière avec le présent. Mais sa maladie, ainsi que le fait que les lettres ne sont que des écrits, empêchent la réalisation de cette adéquation. Ses lettres ne parviennent à transcrire que sa hâte et le décalage temporel. Ainsi, loin de témoigner de sa réalité brute, sa correspondance devient tentative de couvrir ce décalage, de trouver la réalité qu’il n’arrive pas à saisir, son vrai moi, originel et intact. Pour cela, Artaud recourt à des éléments imaginaires en exigeant toujours le contact immédiat, d’où le rôle paradoxal de ses lettres. Le chapitre 2 examine le problème de la destination. La présence des autres est nécessaire à Artaud pour penser, pour compléter son manque. Ses destinataires sont ainsi des dépositaires de son moi. Mais ses lettres s’adressent, au-delà des destinataires réels dont la présence n’est qu’imaginaire, à l’instance transcendante, à l’Autre comme le remarque Vincent Kaufmann dans L’Équivoque épistolaire, instance qui lui donne accès à l’expression et lui restitue son identité. Ses destinataires (critiques, autorités religieuses, hommes politique, médecins, etc.), autoritaires et paternels, sont des figures de cet Autre. Par ailleurs, ses destinataires féminines et amoureuses sont pour lui des moitiés qu’il faut s’incorporer pour retrouver l’unité originelle. Ses lettres d’amour sont ainsi marquées par son désir violent de fusion. Pourtant, l’union amoureuse expose en même temps l’unité de son moi à la perte dans le flot de choses. Les lettres sont aussi écrites pour introduire une distance.L’enjeu de ses lettres de voyage, étudiées au chapitre 3, est de réaliser les deux mouvements inverses (rapprochement et éloignement). Les pays lointains constituent pour Artaud l’ailleurs métaphysique où retrouver son unité originelle. Pendant ses voyages au Mexique (1936) et en Irlande (1937), ses lettres sont comme une scène pour l’avènement de sa nouvelle identité, scène où se rencontrent l’au-delà et l’ici-maintenant. C’est ici que son usage paradoxal des lettres atteint son sommet car la réalisation du « vrai drame » signifie, comme il le prophétise, la disparition du monde matériel et donc aussi celle de l’écriture épistolière. Ses lettres mettent en scène leur propre disparition qui coïncide curieusement avec son arrestation à Dublin et le commencement de sa vie asilaire (1937-1946)...... / The correspondence of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) occupies an essential place in his writings. It shows probably better than his other texts the singularity of his expression. This dissertation examines the role played by his correspondence, the importance of which is admitted, but still insufficiently explored. From the publication of the Correspondence with Jacques Rivière (1924), that started following the refusal of Rivière to publish the poems of Artaud, he publishes letters or texts in epistolary style as if they could replace his works in which he is unable to express his own reality because of his illness : he refuses works "separated from life" and believes he can better express himself in letters. The epistolary expression is for him a way to make the "cry of life" heard and to fight against the "feeling of lack of cause". However, it is not clear that, although anchored in real situations, the correspondence can function as Artaud wants. Rather, in the 1920s and 1930s, its position for him is ambiguous.Chapter 1 approaches this problem in two aspects : the authenticity and the temporality. In his letters, we can see Artaud complain very often of his addressees’ misunderstanding about his pain. His letters do not prove its authenticity, and the ambiguity always goes into them. For him, the authenticity must be proven by the accord of his writings with the present time. But his illness, as well as the fact that the letters consist of words, prevent the realization of this accord. His letters can transcribe only his hustle and time gaps. Thus, far from showing his raw reality, the correspondence becomes an attempt to cover these gaps, to find the reality that he cannot seize, his true self, original and intact. To do this, Artaud uses imaginary elements, still asking for the immediate contact, which makes the role of his letters paradoxical. Chapter 2 examines the problem of destination. The presence of others is necessary for Artaud to think, to complete his lack. His addressees are depositories of his self. But his letters are addressed, beyond actual addressees whose presence is after all imaginary, to the transcendent instance, to the Other as notes Vincent Kaufmann in L’Équivoque épistolaire, instance that allow him access to the expression and restores his identity. His addressees who are authorities and paternal (critics, religious leaders, statesmen, doctors, etc.) are figures of the Other. In addition, the female addressees who are his lovers are his halves that must be incorporated to find again the original unity. His love letters are so marked by his strong desire of fusion. Yet at the same time, the union by love exposes his unity to loss in the flow of things. Letters are also written in order to introduce a distance. The issue of his travel letters, discussed in Chapter 3, is to make simultaneously the two opposite movements (close and away). Distant countries represent for Artaud metaphysical places where he should find his original unity. During his travels in Mexico (1936) and Ireland (1937), his letters are like a stage for the advent of a new identity, stage where meet the beyond and the here-now. It is here that the paradoxical use of letters reaches the peak, because the realization of the "real drama" means, as prophesied he, the disappearance of the material world and therefore that of the letters. His letters direct their own disappearance, which curiously coincides with his arrest in Dublin and the beginning of his life in asylums (1937-1946)....

Este trabalho propõe uma análise da viagem do artista francês Antonin Artaud ao México no ano de 1936. Por meio das correspondências e dos textos de Artaud produzidos neste país, pretende-se problematizar a sua concepção sobre a Revolução Mexicana e sobre os seus desdobramentos políticos e culturais durante os anos 1930, as suas ideias sobre as culturas indígenas e a sua relação com a realidade artística-intelectual mexicana. Parte-se da premissa de que o olhar de Artaud para o México foi formado por um ambiente intelectual e artístico marcado pelo Surrealismo, por um sentimento de crise da civilização europeia e por uma busca por formas de vida mais integradas entre o homem, a natureza e a arte. Artaud chega ao México em fevereiro de 1936 e permanece no país durante oito meses. Segundo suas próprias palavras, fora em busca do que ele denominaria de esoterismo mexicano o único que se apóia ainda sobre o sangue e a magnificência de uma terra cuja magia só os imitadores fanatizados da Europa podem ignorar. Durante a estadia, antes de ir à terra dos Tarahumaras, proferiu conferências na Escola Nacional Preparatória e escreveu artigos em jornais mexicanos a respeito do teatro europeu, do teatro mexicano, do movimento surrealista francês, das suas expectativas com relação à cultura indígena mexicana e da sua busca existencial como artista. No entanto, a sua visita ao México se dá justamente no período pós-revolucionário, durante o polêmico e marcante governo de Lázaro Cárdenas, no qual há uma radicalização da querela entre os artistas denominados universalistas e aqueles conhecidos como nacionalistas. Os primeiros, ao defenderem uma arte moderna e universal, preconizavam a arte europeia como matriz aspecto que Artaud repudiava e os segundos, ao afirmarem uma arte nacional, pura, utilizavam-se da cultura indígena como elemento unificador da nação, mas sem o respeito pela magia e pelo esoterismo indígena que Artaud tanto pregava. Daí as hipóteses para a falta de repercussão sobre o artista francês durante a sua permanência no país. Artaud também projetou sobre o México percepções que ele nutria a respeito do teatro. Idealizador do chamado Teatro da Crueldade, Artaud reconheceu no ritual do peyote praticado pelos índios tarahumaras no México uma vivência que se aproximava do seu projeto teatral / This work proposes an analysis about the Mexico trip realized by the French artist Antonin Artaud in 1936. With Artauds correspondences and texts written in this country, it intends to discuss his conception about Mexican revolution and its political and cultural results during the 1930s years, his ideas about the Indian cultures and his relation with the Mexican artistic intellectual reality. We have the premise that Artauds look to México was formed by an intellectual and artistic surrounding marked for the Surrealism, by an European civilizations crisis feeling and by a search for lifes forms more integrated between man, nature and arts. Artaud arrived in México in February of 1936 and stayed in the country during eight months. With his own words, he was searching for what he called by Mexican esoterism the only one that still rest on the blood and the magnificent of a land whose magic only the fanatics imitators from Europe can ignore. During his permanence, before going to Tarahumaras land, Artaud was the speaker for conferences in the National Preparatory School and wrote articles for the Mexican newspapers about the European theatre, the Mexican theatre, the French surrealist movement and his Mexican Indian culture expectation. He also wrote about his own experience about his existential search as an artist. However, his Mexico visit had been done in the post-revolutionary period, during the polemic and notorious Lázaro Cárdenas government, when there was a radicalization of the debate between the artists known as universalists and other as nationalists. The first ones, when defended a modern and universal art, commended the European art as matrix aspect repudiated by Artaud and the second ones, when asseverated a national art, pure, had utilized the Indian culture like nations unifier element, but without the respect for the magic and for the Indian esoterism that Artaud always had been preached. These aspects could integrate the hypothesis that explains the lack of repercussion about the French artist during his stay in the country. Artaud also projected in Mexico the perceptions that he created about the theatre. The artist was the idealizer of the Cruelty Theatre, and he recognized in the Peyotes ceremony practiced by the Tarahumaras Indians in Mexico an environment close to his theatrical project

PhD / This thesis considers actors as ‘manual philosophers’; it engages the proposition that acting can reveal aspects of existence and Being. In this sense, forms of acting that analyse and engage with lived experience of the world offer a phenomenological approach to the problem of Being. But rather than arrive at abstract, general conclusions about the human subject’s relationship to the world, at least some approaches to acting investigate the structures of experience through those experiences themselves in a lived, physical way. I begin with the troubled relationship between philosophy and theatre and briefly consider the history of attacks on actors. I suggest that at the heart of antitheatricality is what Jonas Barish (1981: 3) calls ‘ontological queasiness’: theatre poses a problem in the distinction between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’. Turning to phenomenology as a particular way of doing philosophy that challenges any dualistic understanding of subjectivity, I reflect on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as a lens for viewing the process of performing and preparing for a role. Heidegger emphasises the intermeshed relationship between the human subject, Dasein (Being-there), and the world to the point that it is impossible to consider one without the other. I have chosen three of the most influential theatre and acting theorists of the twentieth century and examine how each uncovers aspects of existence that are presented in Heidegger’s phenomenology. Firstly, I consider Constantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ which emphasises action for a purpose within an environment, the individual’s relationship to objects in the world and its involvement with other people who share the same type of Being in the world. Secondly, I examine Antonin Artaud’s conception of theatre that seeks to resist the structures of Being, the way the world is interpreted by others (the ‘They’) and the way that the world gets handed over to consciousness for the most part. In many respects, Artaud’s theatre is the embodiment of Anxiety, a world-revealing state where Being becomes apparent. Thirdly, I discuss Bertolt Brecht’s theatre practice as an attestation to authenticity (a truthful engagement with human existence as possibility) through the medium of performance. Brecht seeks to engage audiences in philosophical debate and change the world. Like Heidegger, Brecht also stresses the historical and temporal constitution of the human subject, whilst emphasising practicality in theatre making. By examining these approaches to performance as case studies, this thesis rethinks the notional intersection of philosophy and theatre, concentrating on process rather than literary analysis. This application of phenomenology is new in that it does not merely consider theatre analysis from an ‘ideal’ audience point of view (i.e. provide a phenomenology of theatre). By focusing on acting, I emphasise the development of artistic creation and becoming, and show how certain types of acting are phenomenological. The bold upshot here is a conception of philosophy that acknowledges various theatre practices as embodied forms of philosophical practice. Furthermore, theatre might well be thought of as phenomenological because it can be an investigation of Being firmly entrenched in practical action and performance. Conversely, philosophy is more than just words on a page; it is a performed activity. Actors can be considered manual philosophers in so far as they engage with the problem of Being not in mere abstraction but in the practical challenges of performance.

PhD / This thesis considers actors as ‘manual philosophers’; it engages the proposition that acting can reveal aspects of existence and Being. In this sense, forms of acting that analyse and engage with lived experience of the world offer a phenomenological approach to the problem of Being. But rather than arrive at abstract, general conclusions about the human subject’s relationship to the world, at least some approaches to acting investigate the structures of experience through those experiences themselves in a lived, physical way. I begin with the troubled relationship between philosophy and theatre and briefly consider the history of attacks on actors. I suggest that at the heart of antitheatricality is what Jonas Barish (1981: 3) calls ‘ontological queasiness’: theatre poses a problem in the distinction between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’. Turning to phenomenology as a particular way of doing philosophy that challenges any dualistic understanding of subjectivity, I reflect on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as a lens for viewing the process of performing and preparing for a role. Heidegger emphasises the intermeshed relationship between the human subject, Dasein (Being-there), and the world to the point that it is impossible to consider one without the other. I have chosen three of the most influential theatre and acting theorists of the twentieth century and examine how each uncovers aspects of existence that are presented in Heidegger’s phenomenology. Firstly, I consider Constantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ which emphasises action for a purpose within an environment, the individual’s relationship to objects in the world and its involvement with other people who share the same type of Being in the world. Secondly, I examine Antonin Artaud’s conception of theatre that seeks to resist the structures of Being, the way the world is interpreted by others (the ‘They’) and the way that the world gets handed over to consciousness for the most part. In many respects, Artaud’s theatre is the embodiment of Anxiety, a world-revealing state where Being becomes apparent. Thirdly, I discuss Bertolt Brecht’s theatre practice as an attestation to authenticity (a truthful engagement with human existence as possibility) through the medium of performance. Brecht seeks to engage audiences in philosophical debate and change the world. Like Heidegger, Brecht also stresses the historical and temporal constitution of the human subject, whilst emphasising practicality in theatre making. By examining these approaches to performance as case studies, this thesis rethinks the notional intersection of philosophy and theatre, concentrating on process rather than literary analysis. This application of phenomenology is new in that it does not merely consider theatre analysis from an ‘ideal’ audience point of view (i.e. provide a phenomenology of theatre). By focusing on acting, I emphasise the development of artistic creation and becoming, and show how certain types of acting are phenomenological. The bold upshot here is a conception of philosophy that acknowledges various theatre practices as embodied forms of philosophical practice. Furthermore, theatre might well be thought of as phenomenological because it can be an investigation of Being firmly entrenched in practical action and performance. Conversely, philosophy is more than just words on a page; it is a performed activity. Actors can be considered manual philosophers in so far as they engage with the problem of Being not in mere abstraction but in the practical challenges of performance.

Habilitationsschrift--Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft--Mannheim--Universität, 1986.

Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2002.