Artaud: Reinscribing Artistic Theoretical Binaries Since 1938

While I agree with much of what Artaud puts forth in his "The Theater and it's double" I cannot help but notice that all Artaud really ends up doing is re-inscribing a binary of what he calls Occidental and Oriental theater. He set's the two up as fundamentally diametrically oppositional to each other, arguing that the Oriental should be the more preferable theater because it uses physical action as its primary and exalted language instead of the spoken/written word. While historically this binary has existed, Artaud is not really challenging it, he simply just points it out, and then argues for one side. The side he feels is preferable.

With my background in English I am a sucker for a good text. A good written text. Although I agree with Artaud about the issues that present themselves with a text author and a director translator of that language into the visual/physical. Regardless, a good script is necessary for good theater. Many of my theater friends disagree with me vehemently. Urging that a good script can be just movement. I do not disagree with them

I would like to challenge our notion of written text to perhaps a more Marxist theoretical notion of what a text is. You could also argue a more Brect-ian notion of text. For Brect, the text was the combination of the written word and the visuals on stage. He changed his script for every production of the show. Marxists would propose that a text is "anything that can be read." When we go to the theater we see, i would hope, a "text" that is the perfect marriage of the Occident and the Orient. A theater that transcends these binaries of verbal and physical and combines both to become the script. The text.

I believe the words that the Dah Theatre use is the "score." They work to combine a verbal score and a physical score. I am in favor of theater that does this. Theater that works with a playwright in the company to create a marriage of written text and visual text. Of the physical score and the verbal score. With this combination we find that that we escape the pendulum swing between the theater of the Occident and of the Orient.

I like Artaud. I'd just like him to push a little further. Do a little more.