Comparing Artaud and Grotowski

 

Rewatch the Artaud and Grotowski videos from the Five Truths. Compare them and think about the ways that they are similar and different and how they create TEAM in each version. Use as many specific details as you can. 450 words. Due before class.

When analyzing the Five Truths interpretations of Artaud and Grotowski, both interpretations aimed to jar the audience with several close up camera angles and indirect dialogue. In the Artaud scene, the scene starts off with the sight of Ophelia through a fishbowl. This makes her face appear slightly distorted and blurry because of the water. This also gives the effect that her movements are nearly in slow motion. Despite the distortion, Ophelia’s facial expressions are somewhat clear: She has a quizzical, nearly angry expression, as if she is scrutinizing the fish, possibly angry at them for existing. This suggests many things; Ophelia could be mad at the world, which is represented by the fish bowl and the fish, or she could see herself as one of the fish, helpless and fleeting when objects are dropped on her (objects would be her father’s death). Overall I think this visual is meant to show how out of control Ophelia feels and the distortion within her brain. I think that this scene more than any of the other ones truly represents the character going mad. When the camera angle changes, the view is now artificially distorted, as well as the audio. The audio (Ophelia saying part of her dialogue) sounds far removed and if it is being heard underwater, suggesting that the audience is in the position of the fish in the fishbowl. Her facial expressions are also purposefully distorted, as if she is screaming. Throughout the rest of the scene, the camera angles are also distorted or flipped. When Ophelia finally goes into the water, she slowly wades in and then falls in and her body goes slack. Emotion in this scene is a little bit harder to grasp than in other scenes because of the distortion effects, but overall the actor uses facial expressions to portray anger and madness. 

Tension is used in this scene when she switches from a quizzical expression with furrowed brows to opening her mouth wide as if she is screaming in anger. The atmosphere for the audience is uncomfortable and jarring, especially when the audience does not understand what they are viewing or what is happening in the scene with the camera angle being so close up and distorted. With Artaud’s method, the meaning of every single movement could be analyzed because of how abstract the scene is meant to be, but the overall effect is supposed to make the audience uncomfortable (theater of cruelty). 

When comparing the Artaud interpretation to the Grotowski scene, the scene fell very much along the lines of “poor theater,” Grotowski’s method. This scene cut out any movements at the desk altogether and jumped right into the raw emotions of Ophelia, who is screaming and crying and shaking the table in utter grief. When the camera angle switches to the close up of Ophelia lying on the ground, she looks completely defeated and disconnected from reality, as if she has succumbed to her sadness. The camera angles in this part of the scene also aim to make the audience feel uncomfortable (similar to Artaud) with the eye being drawn to Ophelia’s dark, swollen eyes, suggesting she had been crying uncontrollably for a substantial amount of time. Ophelia is in her most vulnerable state in this scene, which is very evident when she slowly stands up with her voice shaking and nearly breaking and the frailness of her body when she pulls up her dress. The scene then almost immediately cuts to Ophelia dead in the water, with no transition like there is in some of the other scenes. This is also quite jarring, as it leaves the audience to question how she got there. 

This scene seems to start out immediately with tension when Ophelia is screaming and shaking the table, which appears from two different angles. Like the rest of the scene, there is no transition from one emotion to the next so Ophelia starts off in total distress and agony and then the cameras cut to her lying on the floor in total defeat. The atmosphere of this scene also makes the audience somewhat uncomfortable, but the full attention of the audience is on Ophelia’s emotions; there are no other distractions in the scene like there are in Artaud and some of the other interpretations. The meaning of this scene lies completely in Ophelia’s emotions, as it depicts the gravity of her grief.