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The Tank NYC presents the Artaud Diptych

Featured The Tank NYC presents the Artaud Diptych

The Tank NYC presents THE ARTAUD DIPTYCH directed by Ioli Andreadi. A theatrical tribute to the great, groundbreaking artist and thinker Antonin Artaud, written by the two prolific Greek playwrights Ioli Andreadi & Aris Asproulis and consisting of two new plays, the "Artaud / Van Gogh", starring Gene Gillette and the "Bone", starring Gerasimos Gennatas with the live music performance of George Palamiotis. 

Both plays of THE ARTAUD DIPTYCH are presented, back-to-back, in The Tank's Proscenium Theater (312 W 36th St, New York, NY, 10018) on Thursday April 13th, Friday April 14th and Saturday April 15th: "Artaud/Van Gogh" at 7pm (in English) and "Bone" at 8pm (with English surtitles).  

Artaud / Van Gogh: Paris, 1947. Antonin Artaud appears in a packed auditorium. He looks calm. After nine years of psychiatric confinement and having suffered 51 electric shocks in the last year alone, he seems to have returned to ‘order’. The title of his lecture is ‘Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society’. The audience is silent. However, his conviction is high. He has come with proof. He carries it in the 406 scribbled notebooks he has never parted with. All the good society of Paris has filled the place to hear him – Gide, Breton, Camus, Lacan. Artaud passionately defends an idea: Van Gogh’s suicide had its executioners. Initially looking for the reasons for his suicide in the paintings and correspondence of the great painter, he suspects that the real perpetrators are among his audience. Artaud feels Van Gogh’s pulse and prophesies. He wants to unmask the culprits. He wants to cry out for the innocent; to articulate the last syllable between the great injustice of the world and what it takes for someone to end up sleeping with a loaded gun in his arms. The play is inspired by Artaud’s ‘Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society,’ published in ‘47, a year before the author’s death.

Bone: In Paris 1935, Artaud invents a new theatrical form, the Theater of Cruelty, and to put it into practice he creates the play The Cenci – a tragedy about the Count Cenci of Rome who was found murdered by his underage daughter. The play premiered at the Folies Wagram Theater and failed miserably. Artaud decides he will never direct again, travels in search of redemption and is arrested for vagrancy. In 1938, he was officially declared “insane” and was taken to a psychiatric hospital, where he would remain for 9 years. In the last year alone, he was subjected to more than 51 electric shocks. There he acquires the obsession that they come in his sleep and poison his dreams by doing magic, there he falls into a coma and wakes up while he was being taken to the morgue, and there the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan says triumphantly that “finally Mr. Artaud was healed; he will not have to write anything anymore.” In 1946 he regained his freedom of movement, having, however, suffered irreparable damage from the methods of treatment. The “Friends of Antonin Artaud” organized a night dedicated to his work, but he was not allowed to enter, due to the possibility of another ferocious outburst. Disappointed, Artaud voluntarily returns to his cell, deciding to transform into the most virtuoso performer and give one last solo, an outburst, in front of a non-judgmental audience. An audience he will create with his mind. An audience born to love him. He sets up the old stage of the “failed” Cenci, he brings his soul to the forefront, strips it down and sings it with passion and mastery. In a dreamy landscape of memory and with the rhythm of music, he follows the descent into a deep and unspeakable confession. Artist, genius, revolutionary, revisionist, poet, teacher, delusional, aggressive, epileptic, self-destructive and deeply, deeply in love, he composes in a provocative way his final verdict against the modern decency, sticking out his tongue at the concocted authorities of our time and restoring the Theater of Cruelty to its rightful place: in the fiery hearts of the rebels.

In the first play of THE ARTAUD DIPTYCH entitled "Artaud / Van Gogh" the role of Antonin Artaud is performed by the excellent American actor Gene Gillette and in the second play entitled "Bone" the role of Antonin Artaud is performed by the popular Greek actor Gerasimos Gennatas while with him on stage is the great Greek musician-performer George Palamiotis.

The performances are presented under the direction of the preeminent Greek director Ioli Andreadi and have already received important awards and rave reviews, as they were presented this season in the most historic theatre in Greece, the “Art Theatre Karolos Koun”:

- “Best Actor 2022” according to the editors’ choices of “Athens Voice” Magazine (Bone) - “One of the Best Shows of the year” according to the editors of “247news Magazine” (Artaud/Van Gogh) - “One of the Best Actors of the year” in “Athinorama Magazine’s Readers Awards” (Bone) - “One of Best Shows of the year” in “Athens Voice Magazine's Readers Awards” (The Artaud Diptych)

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