Men in tribulation

For one hour, the duration of the performance Men in tribulation, we travel into the mind of Antonin Artaud, poet, theatre maker, thinker and visionary. One hour, the last hour of an exhausted spirit in a battle-weary body. In this last hour, the voices in his head won’t keep silent. They shout, whisper and sing the pain of a spirit that suffers and desires. Again and again, they call up snatches of a life: the theatre maker’s fight, his unwilling body, his drug dependence, his pride, the hostility of the world, the fear for misunderstanding, the desire for higher things. Again years of restraint in psychiatric institutes. The electroshock therapies. Again the trip to Mexico, the meeting with the Taruhumaras, an indian tribe in the inhospitable mountain massif, who find the divine in themselves during a secret ritual. The hope to find deliverance and inner peace, far away from the western civilisation, with these indians who find salvation inside themselves. One hour, the last hour, in the mind of an exhausted man with a battle-weary body: the desperate scream of a dying spirit, his voices that never stop searching, his demons and his ultimate desire for purity.
Bart Van den Eynde