Session fifty-three, Illegal_cinema

Film screening proposed by Loida A. Gómez Rubio followed by discussion.

2005, School of “Traumatic” Arts, Murcia. Three colleagues are running the contemporary theatre workshop. This time, at a designated hour: 12 midnight. It’s time for Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty tonight. We’re welcomed with a silver tray full of very green cigarettes. “Smoke! You have to smoke!”, and so we puff happily. They’re wearing white tunics, it’s all really sacred. Each one of them is holding a grey rabbit by the neck in his or her right hand. The music is so loud… even smoking hurts. There’s a smell of guts and sour blood. “Take off your shoes! We’re going to bandage your eyes, then go down the back passage!” The dark passage is made of white sheets of plastic. We all know the strong smell is coming from there. Who has the stomach to go through it? Not me.

I stood there, a spectator, barefoot and high. What I heard that day were inimitable screams. Satanic music, inciting murder, was playing. I wanted to kill the others. Those three rabbit killers with their bloody tunics. Bastards. They’d pulled me over into their terrain, delirium. Kill, kill, kill… And what if I go mad? What if my head takes over my body the whole time? The whole time. Opening doorways spiralling. All the time. Black. All the time.

That was how I first came to Antonin Artaud. Ten years later, I write him letters telling him how things are going. He answers me in dreams. Sometimes he leaves me secret messages in the mirror.

This ILLEGAL session is an intimate sensory encounter with Antonin Artaud. Through film, sound recordings and text.

Loida A. Gómez Rubio (1984). Born in Murcia, grew up in Cieza, trained in Murcia, Granada, Seville, Madrid, Alicante, Bilbao. Actress. Currently working on her piece ARTAUD y otros animales, presented at Pabellón 6 on 21 May.