Surrealism in the Theatre: The Plays of Roger Vitrac

Author(s): Philip Auslander

Source: Theatre Journal , Oct., 1980, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Oct., 1980), pp. 357-369
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3206891

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 PHILIP AUSLANDER

Surrealism in the Theatre:

The Plays of Roger Vitrac

Any discussion of Surrealism in the theatre is to a large extent hypothetical, a dis-

cussion of what might have been had surrealist theory ever been successfully wed to
theatrical practice. The surrealist movement in France, from its inception in 1924
until the Second World War, presented only seventeen theatrical productions.'
Since most of these ran a single evening and none more than three, Surrealism pro-
duced no more than thirty evenings of theatre in the course of a decade and a half.
Indeed, only two names can be associated with a serious effort at the creation of a
surrealist theatre: Roger Vitrac and Antonin Artaud, who together founded the
Theatre Alfred Jarry (named for the iconoclastic French writer). Vitrac, who had
been with the movement from its beginnings, met Artaud in 1924 when the latter
joined the Surrealists. The two men were on sufficiently friendly terms to spend the
summer of 1925 together, returning from a holiday to discover that Vitrac had been
"excommunicated" from Surrealism by Andre Breton. Artaud was excluded later on
in the year.2

Despite the fact that two of the founders of the Theatre Alfred Jarry had been
rejected by Surrealism and that the third founder, Robert Aron, had never adhered
to the movement, their statements of intention come close to being manifestoes for a
surrealist theatre:

Their efforts are directed toward creating a theatre which will develop in the direction of
complete liberty and which will have no other aim than satisfying the most extreme
demands of the imagination and of the spirit. For them, the theatrical event can no longer
rest upon an illusion but corresponds to a reality of the same order as the other tangible
realities.3

The Theatre Alfred Jarry has been created . . to return to the theatre that total liberty

Philip Auslander, presently a doctoral student in Theatre Arts at Cornell University, studied Surrealism
while at Hunter College, City University of New York.

1 Henri Behar, Etude sur le theatre dada et surrialiste (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), pp. 32-34.
2 Henri Behar, Roger Vitrac: Un Reprouve du surrealisme (Paris: Nizet, 1966), p. 131.
3 Statement of October 1926 as quoted by J. H. Matthews in Theatre in Dada and Surrealism
(Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1974), p. 146.

357

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358 / TI, October 1980

which exists in music, poetry or painting, of which it has been curiously bereft up to
now.4

Vitrac's career, from the writing of his first play until the production of Les Mysteres
de l'amour in 1927, provides a possible paradigm for answering the question of why
Surrealism failed to succeed as theatre.

Vitrac's first artistic affiliation was with Dada, whose spirit of nihilism migrated
with the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara from Zurich to Paris in 1920. It was enthus-
iastically embraced by the three founders of the Parisian antiliterary review
Litterature, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, "who were brought
together by their devotion to Guillaume Apollinaire."s They would later use a word
coined by Apollinaire for their new movement, Surrealism, but for the moment,
they were in sympathy with Tzara. "To kill art," Breton had written him, seemed
"most urgent" (Matthews, p. 86).

The son of a profligate provincial bureaucrat, Vitrac was in Paris at this time, in
the army. One can only imagine the effect of chaotic Dada performances and
demonstrations on Vitrac, who from his earliest childhood had been fascinated by
both the theatre and "the element of surprise."' Vitrac took to distributing Dada
manifestoes in the barracks and, "in front of an astounded colonel," presented "a
play of dadaistic character" entitled La Fenetre Vorace, the text of which is now
lost.7

Vitrac and his friends Jacques and Francois Baron attended a "manifestation" at
St. Julien-le-pauvre on 14 April 1921, where they met and spoke with Louis Aragon
and became more or less officially associated with the Dada group. The degree of
enthusiasm brought by the student-soldiers to Dada is questionable. Matthews notes
that, at the time they met Aragon, he was probably becoming disenchanted with
Dada and may have communicated this to the younger writers (p. 117). Whatever
the case, Vitrac was among those Dadaists who aligned themselves with Breton
rather than with Tzara. When in 1923 the split between Dada and Surrealism was
definitive, Vitrac became one of the first Surrealists.

Vitrac's first play bears the mark of Dada. Le Peintre (1921) opens with a painter
painting a door red.8 A boy enters; The Painter asks him his name.

THE CHILD: Maurice Parchemin. And yours?

THE PAINTER: Mine also.
THE CHILD: That's not true.
THE PAINTER: It's not true? (He pauses.) You're right. (He paints the ch
red. The child exits, crying.)
[p. 11]

4 Antonin Artaud, Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), II, 37, as cited by Michael Benedikt
and George E. Wellwarth, Modern French Theater: The Avant-Garde, Dada and Surrealism (New York:
Dutton, 1964), p. xxvii.
5 Sarane Alexandrian, Surrealist Art, trans. Gordon Clough (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 27.
6 Biographical information derives from Behar's Vitrac, p. 30, passim.
7 Behar, Etude, p. 245. See also his Vitrac, p. 42.
8 Le Peintre, first published in Aventure 3 (January 1922), 34-48; rpt. in Theiatre III (Paris: Gallimard,
1964), pp. 9-22. An English translation by Matthew Josephson appears in Broom 3 (1922), 223-26. In the
present article, translations are my own.

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359 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

The boy re-enters with his mother, only to receive the same treatment again. Both
exit with painted faces, crying.

Next to arrive is a young man who presents a business card, saying he is looking
for M. Parchemin. The Painter recognizes him, but the young man does not know
The Painter. The Painter confesses that he has killed M. Parchemin, then claims to be
"Mme. Parchemin, his widow and the little Maurice Parchemin, his son" (p. 16)
when the young man asks to see them. The young man, concluding that The Painter
is "a murderer. . . . Perhaps a thief" (p. 12), decides to take his leave and demands
the return of his card. The Painter hands him a card.

THE YOUNG MAN: This isn't my card. It says on it M. Glucose, oral surgeon, 31 rue de
la Gaite. My name is Auguste Flanelle. (He throws the card away.)
THE PAINTER: (pushing him outside) Good afternoon, M. Glucose.
AUGUSTE FLANELLE: (behind the door) My name is Flanelle.
THE PAINTER: Glucose.
AUGUSTE FLANELLE: Flanelle.
[pp. 12-13]

The characters thus introduced are involved in a hackneyed plot based on a

romantic triangle. Parchemin has disguised himself as a painter in order to keep an
eye on his wife, whom he later surprises with Flanelle. He has also commissioned a
set of gold teeth from Glucose to present to his wife on her saint's day. When
Auguste Flanelle appears, Parchemin insists that he is the expected Glucose. Par-
chemin, as The Painter, may be said to represent the spirit of Dada. At the very
least, he is a willful troublemaker. He enjoys games: the name routines with little
Maurice and Auguste Flanelle, an ongoing argument with his wife (and anyone else
who has the misfortune to become involved) as to whether the paint he is using is red
or green. These arguments are purely gratuitous-The Painter revels in infantile
contradiction.

Vitrac took a recognizable story and subverted it, disrupting his spectators' expec-
tations. Just as The Painter's arguments are gratuitous, so, too, much of the action of
the play comes from nowhere. M. Glucose appears twice, the second time in a blond
wig. Queried about his new hair color, he declares "I have always been blond" (p.
20). On a more frightening note, after little Maurice dies (offstage) his mother carries
on his corpse. She accuses Parchemin of having killed him; Parchemin paints his
own face red and exits in tears, leaving her with Flanelle. The painting of faces,
which starts out as a vaudeville turn, becomes a cruel mockery of grief. Standing up
for a romantic interview, she drops her child who springs back to life upon contact
with the floor and runs away. He returns with a calendar and sings: "Mommy,
today is your holiday; Daddy told me you weren't here" (p. 15). Although these
moments may owe something to Vitrac's early involvement with Symbolism in
poetry, the harshness of tone, the alternation of clowning and cruelty, the reduction
of human gestures (crying) to meaninglessness and the subversion of popular forms
seen in Le Peintre all derive from Dada. The intent is not to draw the audience into
the fantasy (as it would be in Surrealism) but to push them away, to poke fun at the
proceedings.

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360 / TI, October 1980

In order to grasp the significance of Vitrac's next plays, we must first examine the
ideas that were being introduced by Andre Breton to some of the younger Dadaists.
In 1920, Breton and Soupault began experimenting with trance-writing, hypnosis
and "automatic" writing, a sort of stream-of-subconsciousness which Breton saw as
a means of liberating art from consciously imposed aesthetic conventions. Breton's
Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 enshrined as doctrine the ideas which emerged from
these sessions, defining Surrealism as "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by
which one proposes to express-verbally, by means of the written word or in any
other manner-the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought in the
absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral con-
cern.'"9 One of Breton's ideas seems singularly well adapted to the drama: "The
forms of surrealist language adapt themselves best to dialogue. Here, two thoughts
confront each other; while one is being delivered the other is busy with it; but how
busy with it is it?" (Manifestoes, p. 34). Breton's point is that we never really com-
prehend what is said to us before we respond to it. Dialogue is therefore really a play
of parallel monologues which can result in a surreal juxtaposition of images.

Another theme, which is not fully developed in the Manifesto, is love. In the
Manifesto (p. 4), Breton refers to love as an "exceptional situation" to which normal
man is no longer equal. The surrealist attitude toward love is one which emphasizes
duality and contradiction. As Gloria Orenstein comments, "the mysterious feelings
of love transcend all possible communication via language ... the sadism connected
with the treatment of the beloved represents a defiance of all conventions and the
very essence of surrealist insurrection.'"10

In three plays written in 1922 but never performed, Vitrac took the biggest steps
of any writer in bringing the protosurrealist ideas of the period to the drama. One of
the main features of these works is Vitrac's interest in dreamlike imagery.
Mademoiselle Piege places the viewer in the lobby of an apartment building." The
elevator travels up and down, the porter runs errands, the audience overhears
snatches of discussion, bits of telephone conversations. The device of using frag-
ments of what might be real conversation may constitute a verbal equivalent of
Marcel Duchamp's "Readymades," found objects which become works of art simply
by having been designated such. As Henri Behar points out, it also recalls a similar
technique used by Appolinaire in his Lundi, Rue Christine.12

Upon first exposure to Mademoiselle Pidge, one has the impression that it may be
possible to piece the fragmented conversation together into a coherent situ-
ation. This is not, however, the case. And incoherence causes an unrest that
becomes panic, a panic resulting from the seemingly irrational, unmotivated anxiety
exhibited by the central character, M. Musee. The questions implied by the dialogue

9 Andre Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor:
Univ. of Michigan Press, 1969), p. 26. All further references to this work appear in the text.
10 The Theatre of the Marvelous (New York: NYU Press, 1974), p. 108.
"' Mademoiselle Piege first appeared in Litterature 5 (October 1922); rpt. in Theiatre III, pp. 23-28.
12 Behar, Etude, p. 246.

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361 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

seem to hold the key to Musee's reasons for killing himself. Were these reasons
spelled out, the play might be a social melodrama; with only the most ambiguous
hints to go on, it becomes a kind of dream, a nightmare all the more terrible because
it is possible to identify in some measure with Mus&e's state of mind.

Structured in seven scenes, Entree Libre deals specifically with dreams.'3 The
fourth scene is an image of domestic violence in which Guillaume, after a rather
banal if testy conversation with his wife, H61ene, overturns the dinner table at which
he, H61*ne and M. Henri, their guest, are seated. The upturned table knocks over a
lamp. In the ensuing darkness, a voice cries "Don't kill her!" (p. 40).

The three scenes which lead up to this event and the three scenes after it all repre-
sent dreams of the three characters. The order of dreamers is symmetrical: the first
dream presented is M. Henri's, the second Guillaume's, the third that of his wife.
The fifth scene depicts another of H61ene's dreams; the sixth, one of Guillaume's; the
last dream belongs to M. Henri. A slide of each dreamer's face is to be projected in
the background, as their respective fantasies are enacted.

The six dream-scenes provide a context for the fourth scene. As in Le Peintre, the
story is a romantic triangle. In the first scene, M. Henri, appears as a man in evening
dress, talking with a "Rare Bird" (H61ine). The second scene shows Guillaume as a
sheep, who is told by the man in evening dress "I can run faster than you" (p. 35). In
the third scene, H61ene sees herself as a prostitute propositioned by her husband.

One of the most interesting features of Entree Libre is that each character opens
his first dream alone, describing a different dream (or experience) he has had. This
sort of recounting of dreams was practiced by the Surrealists, who later published
their dreams and encouraged the public to bring accounts of dreams in to the Sur-
realist Research Center.

Although Entree Libre makes use of dreams and dream imagery, it is not a truly
surrealist work. Matthews has observed that the dreams are used as much to give a
comprehensive index of the relationships between the characters as for the dreams'
intrinsic value (p. 133ff.). The chief interest of this play is in its dialogue, which
often borders on poetry. Many of the speeches (especially Guillaume's) are highly
evocative of emotional states. There are also recurrent imagistic themes which might
benefit from psychoanalytic interpretation: children, especially acts of violence
done to children, are often mentioned.

Poison is a silent drama dedicated to Andre Breton.14 The play, in twelve tab-
leaux, can be seen as a forerunner of the "Theatre of Images" practiced by such con-
temporary figures as Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson. The opening scene
presents ten characters, dressed in identical black shirts, who turn, look into the

" According to the dated manuscript, Entree Libre was finished 28 November 1922 (see p. 29, Theatre
III), but remained unpublished until it appeared in Theatre III, pp. 29-45.
'4 Poison is reprinted in Roger Vitrac, Theatre III, pp. 47-54. Completed 4 December 1922 according to
a note in Theatre III (p. 47), Poison was originally published on 1 January 1923 in Litterature 8 (1923),
10-13. An English translation by Malcom Cowley appears in Broom 4 (1923), 226-28.

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362 / TI, October 1980

auditorium, consult watches and sit simultaneously against a mirrored background.

The mirror explodes, revealing a white wall on which appears the enormous shadow
of a nude woman. As the shadow shrinks, the figures on stage are approached by a
plaster statue of a nude woman. Each of the black-shirted people gives her an item of
clothing or a prop: a pair of dark glasses, a fur piece, a revolver, a child. The scene
ends with the tenth blackshirt pursuing her with a hammer.

This scene is concerned with some aspect of the human spirit, perhaps with libid-
inal repression. The uniform black shirts and the simultaneous movement of those
wearing them suggest mechanization, dehumanized uniformity of behavior. What
we think is a nude woman, an object of passion, turns out to be a sterile image of a
woman. The blackshirts give the statue human attributes-she acquires a child with-
out intercourse and a gun with which to end her "life." The tenth of their number
seems to break from the attributive routine, bent on either annihilating an image or
liberating a real woman from the plaster shell. In the second scene, which takes place
in a bedroom (whose floor is littered with pieces of plaster), a man rubbing his hands
walks to his closet, rings a bell, and is answered by a woman bearing a breakfast
tray. After the woman leaves, the man paints his own silhouette on the mirrored
door of the closet. The woman jumps out of the closet into his arms, and they kiss
passionately. The open closet, however, serves as a doorway for twelve soldiers and
an officer, who put an end to this romantic interlude. The artificial woman of the
previous scene has been awakened to an (albeit rudimentary) emotional life; but just
when her liberation is consummated, it is quashed by repressive forces.

The first scenes of Poison communicate through images typical of Vitrac: painters,
children, and mirrors appear. The last scenes parody communication and theatrical
conventions. In scene seven, a man holding a placard inscribed with the number 7
stands in front of a drop representing a railway station. Scene eight shows a woman
in front of an office setting holding a sign reading 8. A fireplace, a book, a painting
are presented as sets; one is reminded both of "stock" sets and of the music-hall con-
vention of showing a card naming each scene. The final scene consists in the image
of a mouth which pretends to speak. The point of the later scenes is not necessarily
negative-that attempts at communication are worthless-but instead a demonstra-
tion of the richness of dream-derived images vis-a-vis conventional theatrical
means.

Vitrac's next play, Les Mysteres de l'amour (1923) is the culmi

ment in surrealist drama." In it, the author combines tendencie
plays of 1922 into a drama which attempts to unite life and
medium of dreams. Subtitled "drame surrealiste," Les Mysteres
of being the first of Vitrac's plays to be produced.

Les Mysteres opens with a prologue in which Patrice, a you

the mud of a public square. A policeman asks him "You there
Patrice responds "You can see for yourself, sir: I'm finishing

15 Les Mysteres de I'amour (Paris: Gallimard, 1924); rpt. in Theiatre II (Pari

58. An English translation by Ralph J. Gladstone appears in Benedikt and

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363 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

closes. The first scene of the play takes place in a stagebox. Patrice and L a are hav
ing a discussion in the course of which Patrice offers Lea some flowers, then slaps
her. Lea calls her mother (Mme. Morin) to tell her of Patrice's love while he, explain-
ing that he is going for a walk by the beach, turns to the audience and makes insult-
ing remarks. Three friends of Patrice enter to wish the lovers their best, then exit.
Under Patrice's prompting, L a declares in a shout how much she loves him. Voices
from the audience respond: "But why? Good Heavens! Are you sick?"
LEA: Unto madnessl
VOICE: Are you crazy?
PATRICE: Unto madness.
ANOTHER VOICE: Do you hear them, Martine?
(Gunshot)

Voices continue asking "Do you hear them" of first Marie, then Julie, Therese, and
so on, each question followed by a gunshot. Then several voices at once cry out:
"Kill me! Kill him! Kill her! Mercy! Pardon! The Child!" (p. 18). During this pande-
monium, the houselights go out. Patrice attempts to reorganize the audience, finally
calling for a constable to arrest the spectators. A voice shouts: "M. Patrice, you are
a criminal." Patrice replies: "Me, sir? No, sir. Are you deaf? I love Lea. You should
have yelled that you loved Julie, Marie, Therese, Michelle or Esther; then Lea would
be on the pile, and I would have lust on my hands" (p. 19). Patrice and Lea wave to
the audience in a friendly way, as the houselights come back on.

The lovers are visited by Dovic, L6a's former boyfriend. He pays her his respects
in the same manner as Patrice made his gift of flowers:

I object, Lea. (He slaps her.) I always loved you. (He pinches her.) I still love you. (He
bites her.) You must give me my due. (He pulls her ears.) Did I have cold sweats? (He
spits in her face.) I caressed your cheeks and breasts. (He kicks her.) My caresses were
yours alone. (He pretends to strangle her.) You left me. (He shakes her violently.) Did I
hold it against you? (He punches her.) I am good. (He throws her to the ground.) I've
forgiven you already. (He drags her around the box by her hair.)
[p. 21]

Patrice remains indifferent to this episode. But when Dovic indicates that he still
wants L6a, he and Patrice come to blows. As they roll around on the floor, L6a
warns them not to knock over the furniture. Only when the doorbell rings does she
ask them to get up. They do: Dovic is covered with blood. Some neighbors enter,
only to be sent away by Patrice, along with Dovic. Once they are gone, a woman
with a blue face, hands, and feet, wearing a nightgown, crosses the stage and exits.
Patrice assures L6a that the woman is "the virgin."

The three knocks which signal the beginning of a French performance are heard.
The houselights go out, the stagelights come up, the box vanishes into darkness.
Onstage, against a backdrop on which is printed "ONE CAN ALWAYS DIE TWO
HOURS AT A TIME CIGARETTES:SILK" (p. 23) a scene takes place between a
young man and his bearded father. We never see either character again. The curtain
comes down, and the house manager comes forward to inform us that the play's
author, one Thdophile Mouchet, has killed himself. After he leaves, cries of

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364 / TJ, October 1980

"Author, author!" resound throughout the auditorium. The author appears, in shirt-
sleeves, covered in blood, shaking with laughter.

The appearance of the blood-drenched author marks the end of the first of the
play's five tableaux. It is as though Vitrac, by having the action take place all around
the auditorium, surrounded the audience with a dream, perhaps a nightmare. The
conventions of proscenium staging were violated; the audience did not know where
to expect what next. The subject of this dream play is, of course, love and its uncon-
scious ramifications. The Surrealists perceived a duality of love in the way lovers
can both adore and despise the object of their passion. The violence against Lea has
its parallel in the deaths of Martine, Marie, Therese, and the other female spectators.
"The spectator's role in the theatre is no guarantee of safety when dream and reality
cannot be kept apart" (Matthews, p. 127). Vitrac's play reflects the dadaistic
aesthetic of confrontation, but as with other Surrealists, this confrontation is
directed at involving rather than alienating the audience.

The second tableau makes use of a split set, half of which represents the interior of
Dovic's apartment, the other half the Quai des Grands Augustins. Patrice is dressed
as a Lieutenant of Dragoons; Dovic appears as Lloyd George, the English Prime
Minister. Lea carries a doll which represents a child. When the doll cries, Patrice
drops it in the river.

In his apartment, Dovic (Lloyd George) reveals to L6a that what she thought was
a little girl lying in his bed is only the bust of a young girl, sawn off at the shoulders.
L6a feels she must leave the room a moment to scream, leaving Patrice and Dovic
"facing one another, petrified" (p. 26). Her squeamishness is forgotten a moment
later, however, when she plucks the eyes from the bust of the young girl, saying
"My eyes, Patrice, my eyes!" (p. 27).

Lloyd George (Dovic) has in the meantime brought in the body of a young man,
which he proceeds to cut up. Mme. Morin, dressed in mourning, is escorted into the
apartment by her dead husband. Lloyd George sets the table, and all sit down to eat,
except Patrice who lies down in bed. Lloyd George suggests to Lea that she place the
legs of the corpse of the young man under the bust so that no one will realize that the
girl has been dismembered. As she does so, Lloyd George directs her attention to
Patrice whose head has left his body and come to rest on top of a cabinet. M. Morin,
Lea's father, reminisces about a fishing trip: "The sea was bad that night. We were
pulling in sardines by the netful" (p. 28). Lea covers Patrice's head with a newspaper.
M. Morin tells his story for a second time; the newspaper blows away. Lea screams.
M. Morin takes Lloyd George off in the direction of the Quai. Mme. Morin tries to
persuade Lea to leave the apartment. Two arms "like dead branches" rise from the
bed, with "two very white enormous hands" at their ends. L~a kneels and coos over
them as she had over her doll at the beginning of the scene: "She has my bridled
eyes. My blond hair. My clear mouth. One must admit that one doesn't die of love"
(p. 29).

The third tableau, set in a hotel room, opens with an exchange between L~a and
Patrice which could be taken either as lovers' banter or as parallel monologues:

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365 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

(Lia is bending over Patrice's eye and is looking in it.)

LEA: What is it?
PATRICE: It's a wheel.
LEA: And behind that?
PATRICE: Behind it is a white quarry.
LEA: Yes, the workers are resting.
PATRICE: IS that right?
LEA: What's that sparkling among the rocks7
PATRICE: Tools. They're handsome, aren't they7 The smallest looks like a pink f
nail and the largest resembles a hatchet. There's a man holding the hatchet
you see him?
LEA: Very well. He looks tired.
PATRICE: Nonetheless, he has food and drink.
LEA: He's taking a bath. That's strange.
PATRICE: Why is it strange?
LEA: He's melting. He's white. The animals are eating him.
PATRICE: Poor animals!
[pp. 30-31]

Their discussion is interrupted by a butcher who has come to pick up something.

He goes into the kitchen, only to return a moment later complaining that what Lea
has for him is not worth his time. "Even if you gave me the skin, nails and hair, I
wouldn't give you another penny!" (p. 33).
Mme. Morin enters, then Dovic. The Author enters and is asked how he wants the
play to end. The Author, who is not the same character as Theophile Mouchet,
responds that he neither knows nor cares. After he exits, Patrice takes up a chair and
breaks everything on the set, knocking out Dovic and Mme. Morin, as the lights go
out. When they come back up, Patrice is dressed in tatters. L a, who has given birth,
appears with an infant boy and apologizes for having taken so long. Patrice takes
the baby, whom he decides to name Guillotin, and places him on the mantlepiece.
He calls to the child, who tries to jump down to him, but who falls and is killed.
Patrice exits. A policeman comes on, asking Lea if solmeone has been beating her.
She says she is only crying for her child, who has died of the measles.

When Les Myst&res de l'amour was produced, only these first three tableaux were
given.'6 The content of the play becomes less obscure, however, if we examine the
two remaining tableaux. The fourth opens on another parody of a stage convention:
a simultaneous setting which is "at once a railway station, a dining car, the seashore,
the hall of a hotel, a shop, the main square of a provincial town" (p. 41). L a is
standing by herself. Her mother appears, dressed in mourning and leading a child
and two dogs. She asks Lea to watch over these companions while she goes to buy
tickets for the dogs. She assures her daughter that she will be right back and that, in
any case, her husband is on the train. The lights dim, then come up on L@ a in a
dining car. As the train starts to move, she screams to a conductor that the dogs and
child do not belong to her. She encounters her father, incarnated as Mussolini.
"Your wife, I suppose, gave me this child and these animals. Only, you can easily
understand that I can't burden myself with a child, dogs and a man at my age"
(p. 42).

16 Bdhar, Etude, p. 355.

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366 / TI, October 1980

Lea goes to the hotel, where she acquires bones for her dogs. Mussolini enters, and
Lea tells him she wants to buy new shoes for the child. She goes to a shop with the
intention of obtaining white shoes, but ends up with a blue pair. At the end of the
scene, she takes the child and, followed by the dogs, leaves Mussolini holding his
head.

The last scene takes place in the hall of a hotel where L6a has been living. A crowd
is assembling, there is great commotion, someone screams. The elevator comes
down into the hall, and Lea, hands bloodied, is led out by two policemen and ques-
tioned. The manager of the hotel explains to the police that Lea has smashed her
mirror and toilet, strangled the goldfish in her aquarium, and burned the curtains of
her room. She replies that she did these things in retaliation for the broken promises
Patrice made to her. The police are about to lead Lea off when she causes a door to
open of its own accord. She explains the power of words; when she says "Patrice,"
he appears and the police run away. As the former lovers embrace, three children
enter. One of the children claims to be the father of a cavalry officer; he shoots the
other two. When a thunderclap sounds and Lea fears she may lose both Patrice and
the surviving child, the latter offers her his son, a colonel.

The Author enters and hands Patrice a revolver, explaining that "a final shot is
essential to the denouement" (p. 54). Patrice shoots at the Author, to no avail. L6a
asks the Author if he has anything for her; he hands her a second pistol. Patrice tells
the Author to impregnate his own brain, then bring one of the resulting little brains
to Lea.

The play ends with Patrice and L6a summing up their relationship, concluding
that neither love nor pain nor goodness exist; only people, forgiveness and death are
real: "death like forgiveness. Like snow on a mountain. Forgiveness like fire one cuts
with a knife" (p. 58). Lea shoots into the auditorium, killing a spectator.

Les Mysteres de l'amour is a complex piece, condensing the ambiguous experience

of love into a short narrative. The theatrical imagery is dense and opaque-the exact
significance of Patrice's floating head, of the enormous white hands, of Lloyd
George's brutality, of M. Morin's appearance as Mussolini are unknowable. True to
the play's origins, its meaning can only be assessed by comparison between the emo-
tions it evokes and the viewer's or reader's own emotional life. Vitrac's rendering of
love is altogether poetic, both in its language and its visual aspects, but largely unro-
mantic. It is love as seen by Lea, who chooses Patrice over Dovic only to be aban-
doned by him, only to be fettered with symbols of domesticity (children and dogs),
only finally to go mad alone in a hotel, awaiting the return of her beloved. The play
charts Lea's descent into madness and the cynicism she acquires from it while imply-
ing that her madness is not madness at all, but simply the intensity of emotional
experience that is love. From the start, the audience is involved: the play is our
dream-world as much as it is Lea's. At the opening, men in the audience shoot their
women in despair of ever feeling the passion demonstrated by Patrice and Lea. In the
end, no longer believing in the beneficence of that passion, L~a gratuitously kills a
spectator. Les Mystares seeks to depict the sadomasochism of love, the violence
inherent in the human subconscious. Vitrac described the play after its performance

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367 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

as "an ironical work which renders concrete on stage the disquiet, double solitude,
dissembled criminal thoughts and eroticism of lovers. For the first time, a real dream
was realized on stage" (original emphasis; Matthews, p. 120). In Les Mysteres, the
imagery of Poison, the dream-state of Entree Libre, the provocation of Le Peintre,
and the at once familiar and disorienting ambiance of Mademoiselle Pidge are com-
bined in a working formula for surrealist drama. The use of action in the audience
and the characters representing the play's author are anti-illusionistic devices, assert-
ing the work's autonomy as an artistic product, denying the need for a naturalistic
outside referent.

That Vitrac's writing for the theatre met with official surrealist approval, we have
no reason to doubt: he is mentioned in the 1924 Manifesto (p. 26) as having given
proof of "absolute Surrealism." Why, then, were none of Vitrac's plays produced
under the aegis of the movement? The answer to this question is, in part, the answer
to why the Surrealists produced so little theatre generally.

We must recall Breton's emphasis on automatism at this early stage of Surrealism.

It is not at all clear how automatic performance could be achieved. Breton was a
poet, fascinated by the power of language, "l'alchimie du verbe." To take a product
of surrealist writing technique and have it performed by actors with no investment
in the movement seemed to him a complete violation of everything Surrealism stood
for. Surrealism was to be an end, not a means. Thus Jacques Baron can remark that
"Breton's position with regard to the theatre is pretty much the same as his position
with regard to the novel.""17 Breton opposed fiction on the ground that only the
direct reporting of an author's own inner life, his unconscious, could be really inter-
esting, not some arbitrary characteristics he assigns to fictional beings created from
the realities he has observed.18

Breton seems to have been right about the inappropriateness of the theatre as a
vehicle for Surrealism. Artaud approached Lugn&-Poe, the Symbolist director, with
Les Mysteres, and was to have directed it for Lugne-Poe's company in December of
1925. Artaud opted out, however, to take a role in a different production. In
September 1926 he, Vitrac and Aron approached Mme. Allendy for help in raising
the necessary funds to produce the play. By April 1927, she had accumulated 3000
francs which she turned over to Aron. The Thiatre de Grenelle was rented for two
performances on June first and second. Les Mystires shared the bill with Artaud's
Ventre Brule and Gigogne by Max Robur (Robert Aron). Artaud directed, using ac-
tors from Charles Dullin's group, with which he himself had worked. Despite a lack
of rehearsal time, he attempted to develop a surrealist acting style in which each
gesture carried in itself "all of the fatality of life and the mysterious encounters of
dreams.""9

The final effect of the performance can be judged from its criticism. Fortunat
Strowski correctly observed that "applying rational unifying principles to this play

17 L'An 1 du surrealisme (Paris: Denoel, 1969), p. 154.

18 Andre Breton, Nadja (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), pp. 17-18.
19 Behar, Etude, pp. 241-42.

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368 / TI, October 1980

is like applying Aristotelian syllogism to Pascal's Pensees."20 Although it would be

wrong to expect logical unity in a surrealist production, the piece did not seem to be
theatrically unified either. Marcel Sauvage stated that while he had enjoyed reading
the play, "on stage it all becomes, if I may say so, a pot-pourri containing elements
of film, music-hall and varsity show."21 Benjamin Cremieux, who had also read the
play, was disappointed at not finding in the performance the "poetic parody" he had
enjoyed on the page: "The theatre obstructed the juxtaposition of fragmentary im-
ages, despite Artaud's good direction."22 If these sympathetic critics are to be believed,
production added very little to the script. Despite Vitrac's claim that "a real dream"
had finally made it onto the stage, the organizers of the Theatre Alfred Jarry were
disappointed with their product. According to Max Joly, who knew Artaud, the
director was unhappy: ". .. in failing to 'awaken' its audience, the play had the
same effect that a Boulevard production, or a production with aesthetic intentions,
would have had."23

The antagonism which had led Breton to dismiss Vitrac from the movement was
based partly on personal differences: Vitrac, who was unenthusiastic about manning
the Surrealist Research Center, did not really believe that Breton's experiments had
succeeded in uncovering unconscious material and did not like the alliance Breton
was planning between the Surrealists and the Communist Party.24 The differences
also derived, however, from more legitimate philosophic doubts as to whether the
theatre could be used to convey surreality. Some of Breton's doubts were justified:
the juxtaposition of images in Les Myst&res failed to create a surreal feeling. On
stage, the play was confused.

One can speculate as to the reasons for this failure. Certainly the limited means of
the Theatre Alfred Jarry are in part to blame. But more so, I suspect, is the aesthetic
distance between audience and performer which informs the theatre. In an imagistic
piece such as Poison (as in surrealist painting or a film such as Dali and Bufiuel's Un
Chien Andalou [1928]) this distance is exploited-the disparity between stage life
and real life produces a dreamlike effect. This is also true in Mademoiselle Piege,
where unexplained violent action contrasts shockingly with familiar locale. In an
extended play like Les Mysteres, which attempts to force a direct confrontation with
the audience, the theatrical medium becomes a hindrance. So long as it is clear that
all the people involved, both on stage and in the auditorium, are actors, no real
break is made in theatrical illusion. It becomes impossible for the audience to sus-
pend disbelief and enter into a dreamlike state.

If Vitrac's failure lies in not having found the means to produce the automatic
response that Breton was after, he nonetheless succeeded in developing a surrealist

20 Behar, Vitrac, p. 138. Behar obtained these clippings from the Theatre Alfred Jarry archive, Fonds
Rondel.
21 B&har, Vitrac, p. 138.
22 B&har, Vitrac, p. 138.
23 Behar, Vitrac, p. 139.
24 Behar, Vitrac, pp. 101-03.

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369 / ROGER VITRAC'S SURREALISTIC THEATRE

drama. Vitrac and Artaud were aware of the incompatibility of the theatre and
automatism. They also realized, as Breton did not at that point, that automatism
was not essential to Surrealism: "It has always been far from our thoughts to con-
sider Surrealism as a method capable of effectiveness solely through the means of
automatic writing. Surrealism is perfectly consistent with a certain lucidity. In this
lucidity, a superior logic participates. ... ."25 Artaud and Vitrac anticipated a transi
tion in Surrealism. This transition is clearly illustrated by reference to surrealist
painting. The early automatic works of Andr6 Masson, in which Surrealism is the
technique, eventually gave way to the work of Rend Magritte, whose images derive
from dreams, but whose technique is that of standard representational realism. Th
viewer is not so much "awakened" by his pictures as enlightened through a glimps
into the artist's unconscious. Had Vitrac's work appeared during the later phase of
Surrealism (the 1930s), when Breton was more receptive to "representational Sur-
realism," it might have received the support of the movement.

25 Artaud, Oeuvres Complates, II, 38, as cited by Benedikt and Wellwarth, p. xxix.

Forthcoming Articles in Theatre Journal

Phyllis Zatlin Boring Theatre in Madrid
Bernard F. Dukore Pinter's Staged Monologue
Katherine Free Greek Drama and The Kutiyattam
Daniel R. Jones Edward Bond's "Rational Theatre"
Orville K. Larson Giacomo Torelli, Sir Philip Skippon and
Stage Machinery for the Venetian Opera
Judith Milhous and
Robert D. Hume The Silencing of Drury Lane in 1709
Laurence Senelick Vera Kommissarzhevskaya: Symbolist Eidolon
Thomas Torda Tiarov's Princess Brambilla

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