When you’re looking to tell captivating stories that fully engage everyone at the D&D table, it’s best to look to the masters.
Whether we’re talking about the page, stage, or the big screen, there is no shortage of inspiration out there to pull from.
But today I want to talk about one of my personal favorites.
In his time (and to be honest, even today), he was viewed as a tortured madman. But his theories and unique style of storytelling and stagecraft have gone on to inspire countless productions and shaped our idea of what storytelling even is!
Pulling inspiration from these powerful ideas and applying them to your own game is an excellent way to keep your players hooked.
This is what every Dungeon Master can learn from the visionary creative genius, Antonin Artaud.
Who Was Antonin Artaud?
Let’s start at square one with who Artaud was.
Antonin Artaud was a French writer, artist, actor, and director in the early 1900s. His creative work is among the most important of the European avant-garde movements of the time and was known for its bizarre and shockingly raw surrealist themes.
Diagnosed with meningitis at a young age, illness (both physical and mental) would be a recurring theme throughout his life.
In fact, a large amount of Artaud’s life (somewhere around 15 of his 51 years) would be spent in various hospitals and institutions. (Remember: this is a time when prescriptions of opium and electroshock therapy were common despite them ultimately doing more harm than good.)
Nevertheless, Artaud worked tirelessly to redefine the theatre and the meaning and methods of storytelling.
He envisioned using theatre as a way to communicate raw and complex emotions in a way that was very real, raw, and present.
This “Theatre of Cruelty” as he would call it, pulled a great deal of inspiration from Balinese dance and Oriental Theatre. These art forms placed the audience squarely in the middle of what was happening and traditionally incorporated deep themes and complex stories.
With almost overwhelming lighting, special effects, and a heavy focus on symbology, Artaud envisioned this Theatre of Cruelty as something that must be truly felt to be understood. His goal was to engage with the audience’s senses and not just their mind through words.
While many of his contemporaries wanted to make theatre as close to real life as possible, Artaud instead saw power in myth and metaphor. In his mind, the goal was to remove as much reality as possible from what was being shown.
However, where many saw a madman, history would eventually smile on Artaud’s genius.
From the stage and the early days of cinema to the modern age of Hollywood and Netflix, Artaud’s influence has reached beyond even just theatre and inspired countless visionaries and creatives.
Antonin Artaud’s Big Ideas
Now that we’ve covered who Antonin Artaud was and his influence, let’s move on to his big ideas.
We’ll start by going over his main ideas as he explained them and how they manifested themselves in his work. From there, we’ll come back and put it all together in a way that makes sense at the D&D table.
Artaud had a lot of truly brilliant ideas, but we can really distill them down to three main pillars. At least for our purposes here!
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Embrace Surrealism, Abolish Reality
The more realistic the theatre aimed to be; the more boring Artaud found it.
To him, there was a great potential to unleash true magic that was being completely wasted here. The focus on a production being understood, in his opinion, made it impossible for it to have a true impact.
Instead of an audience having lines read to them, he envisioned a production that assaults the audience’s senses so that they stop engaging with their mind and instead engage with the feelings being created within them.
Artaud felt that good theatre is meant to seem more “real” by working as an escape from boring day-to-day life.
In much the same way that you might describe a dream (or nightmare) that makes no logical sense but still deeply affected you, Artaud wanted to capture that.
If you’re taking Artaud’s advice, stop trying to make things as real and “believable” as possible.
Whether we’re talking about a play, movie, or D&D game, being able to remove “what makes sense” is an important consideration. Something being interesting or cool is often enough justification for it to exist in its own right!
This is especially common when we’re talking about worldbuilding.
It reminds me of the introduction to one of my favorite strange films: Rubber.
As a film about a killer tire with psychic powers (yes, seriously), I think Artaud might have enjoyed it. The opening would fit right alongside most of Artaud’s writing and reflections.
I’ll include the video below.
The Power of Myth, Symbols, and Immersion
Artaud insisted that people have a fundamental need for ceremonies and “rituals” in their life. In his view, this is what made the theatre so important.
Costumes should be over the top. Lighting and sound effects should be jarring and intense as if they’re grabbing the audience by the lapels and shaking them awake. Meanwhile, concepts should put emphasis on symbols and what is being represented rather than “what is.”
However, Artaud insisted that there shouldn’t be a focus on props and staging.
Anything that is being used in the performance should be used to further enable the actors to open up from a place of pure emotion in a way that is both physical and sensational.
What matters most is the specific feelings that are being communicated by the actors and being felt by the audience. To this end, Artaud specifically called for “organized anarchy” as the play surrounds the audience who are seated in the center of it.
The focus is not on words and dialogue, but instead on movement, gestures/expressions, and the use of space.
Funny enough, this is not a radical departure from what D&D already is!
In fact, I think “organized anarchy” is probably a pretty good way to describe the standard D&D experience!
Symbols, myth, and over-the-top descriptions/encounters are important parts of what makes D&D the game that it is. Players are both the actors and audience in a D&D session which actually amplifies the power myth and symbols because they can be fully interacted with within the game.
Antonin Artaud passed away decades before D&D would ever be a thing, but I can’t help but think that he would have loved the game!
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The Theatre of Cruelty
But Artaud’s biggest idea (which we’ve already briefly mentioned) is what he called The Theatre of Cruelty.
The other ideas we’ve covered are meant to build into this concept. However, we need to look past the “shock factor” of the name to see what Artaud is really calling for.
“Cruelty is appetite for life, cosmic rigor, implacable necessity. I used the word cruelty as I might have said life or necessity. Fate leaves no room for choices, but necessity does. Not in the sense that we are free to accept it or reject it… but in the sense that we are free to accept or reject ourselves in it.”
-Antonin Artaud
To Artaud, the power of the Theatre of Cruelty was in communicating emotions and concepts in their truest form.
It was going beyond what words are able to describe and portray to communicate directly with the audience’s heart and not their mind.
It’s about creating the situation and message while then inviting the audience to immerse themselves in what is happening through the use of symbols and staging.
Artaud called for less focus on narrative and a full focus on the spectacle and sensations. Bizarre lighting, music, dancing, sound, and other effects were used to fully capture the audience’s attention.
The goal was to create something so radically different and overwhelming to the logical part of the brain that then works as a kind of fun-house mirror to “reality”.
The driving idea behind this is that this portrays a type of “fully realized” version of both life and reality.
By amplifying the spectacle and emotions, Artaud believed that we’re able to strip away the illusions of theatre and of our day-to-day life. From there, we reach something more true, timeless, and “real” in both the play and in ourselves.
To Artaud, good theatre should be more “real” than everyday life.
In other words, he was big on escapism.
How Can Dungeon Masters Use Artaud’s Ideas?
So, let’s now put it all together and consider how this applies to D&D.
Be mindful that these aren’t techniques to be used constantly and in every single situation that arises in your game. View it more as a set of tools that you can use in those situations that demand drama, immersion, and intensity.
As interesting as a D&D game that was “all Theatre of Cruelty, all the time” might be, the real power of this technique lies in dialing up the drama and atmosphere of a specific moment to its absolute highest level.
If you try to apply this to every situation from boss fights to ordering an ale at the tavern, it takes away the impact.
So use these techniques when they’re going to be the most impactful!
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Feeling Over Logic
What Artaud was specifically trying to achieve with his Theatre of Cruelty was full immersion for the audience. He wanted them to stop thinking logically and to instead understand what was happening through feeling it.
Beyond the lighting, music, and noise was a core message or theme that was being communicated. But to bring that out the thinking/logical side of the audience had to be shut down if they were to “buy in” to what was being presented.
This isn’t so different from a DM attempting to increase immersion in their own games.
The DM creates the vehicle and situations for players to immerse themselves in the game world, but it is still ultimately up to the players to accept or reject that.
If a player rejects that immersion, Artaud would likely insist that the DM would need to increase the spectacle until the player accepts the immersion.
Are they still thinking too logically? Have they been given powerful enough symbols and themes to interact with?
I’m not sure about forcing/overwhelming players into immersing in the game, though it can still signal that the DM can be including more opportunities for immersion.
Description and Emotion
As the DM, you need to paint the picture for your players. It’s not enough to say “a red dragon is attacking.”
Using vivid and guiding descriptions, the DM should paint the chaos being caused by the dragon attack.
But don’t just describe what’s happening or what things look like. You want your descriptions to create an emotional response and not just function as data.
Ask yourself what emotions are associated with a dragon attacking the city and how you can bring those out in the players.
If you can stir those feelings of fear or desperation, the situation becomes more real and the players will be more immersed in what is happening.
Use symbology such as the dragon destroying a huge statue of the city’s legendary hero to represent the scale of this new threat. Even this legendary hero of old is just dust compared to the attacking dragon.
As the temple of a local deity crumbles and burns, has that deity abandoned the city? Perhaps the head priest (who is usually calm and collected) is screaming “The end is upon us! We’re doomed!” and causing yet more panic.
If possible, tailor these “emotion-oriented descriptions” to the characters.
Not only is a dragon attacking, but symbols of what their character holds closest (the hero statue might hold special meaning to a Paladin or Fighter, the temple for a Cleric, etc) are being torn down in the process.
The dragon attack is more of a “logical” situation, but the characters’ responses are informed by the “emotional” situations that surround it which opens a new level of immersion for the players themselves.
People act on emotion and then justify with logic. If you can create that emotional connection, the players will further immerse themselves almost without thinking.
Growth
Finally, we trace back to the very core of Antonin Artaud’s ideas and look at the “why” behind them.
Despite the name of the Theatre of Cruelty, it was ultimately meant to be the kindest and surest way of communicating a feeling of dire importance to others.
As they say, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
While it was almost unbearably intense in the moment, it was a necessary step towards revealing some ultimate truth, message, or opportunity for growth.
But this is where the true power of bringing Artaud’s ideas into your D&D game lies.
When you’ve gotten them to engage emotionally with the story and fully immerse themselves, you’re creating that very tension and “necessity” that Artaud spoke of. When the moment ends, however, you can’t just leave that tension there and you also can’t just turn it off like flipping a switch.
Use the same emotional descriptions that you used to create the drama as a way to bring resolution to it. Where there was once fear, dread, and confusion you should speak to feelings of triumph and relief.
As the dust settles, how is this a growing moment for the characters?
The players will have formed their own emotional connection to what happened. As the DM, you want to reinforce that connection as a way to help the player further explore/develop their character while also rewarding that deeper level of immersion.
This is what creates the epic stories and moments that you and your group will remember fondly for the rest of your lives. It’s that point of growth that goes even beyond the game itself.
Maybe you didn’t really (as in “in real life”) just slay a dragon…
But then again…
…you did.
Conclusion – Antonin Artaud for DMs
The myth of “the tortured artist” is one that most people are well familiar with.
Few have ever been as ridiculed and misunderstood (yet also so very visionary) as Antonin Artaud was. Without Artaud and the influence he had on the theatre, it’s difficult to imagine just how different things like film and, yes, even the theatre of the mind within D&D would be!
But I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Artaud’s work isn’t exactly the most accessible stuff out there.
If this article does inspire you to dig into Artaud’s work, be prepared for some of the most disturbing (but also mesmerizing) imagery and situations your mind could ever conjure up. You’ve been warned.
For most DMs, I think learning these key principles of Artaud’s work is enough. However, it’s such a pivotal way to take the magic that this misunderstood genius sought to bring to the stage and give it a new life at the D&D table.
I hope this article has given you inspiration to try something new and bring more drama to your game!
Truth be told, this is an article that I’ve been wanting to write for over a year now. So, I’m very happy to be able to share it with you now!
If you’d like more articles that pull from the stage and screen to inspire your D&D game, let me know in the comments!
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A very interesting reading, thank you. Unfortunately, I had almost no familiarity with Artaud’s work, and so it was quite enlightening.
I would say that these techniques may be suitable for a campaign in Feywild or any similar strange place that is surreal enough and is either projecting emotions or influencing them (like the planes of Eberron, for example).
Hi V-Z!
He’s a very fascinating person to learn about whose ideas (while very strange) have had a major impact on storytelling even though he never received the praise/credit he deserved.
The Feywild would definitely be an INCREDIBLE place to incorporate Artaud’s strangest ideas. I think that his emphasis on mood and drama could also be used to capture the most unsettling parts of the Shadowfell as well.
(After all, how do you make players feel like they’re in a bleak and unsettling land of gloom instead of sitting around the table eating pretzels?) 😉
During lessons I usually prefer to move around the room, especially when explaining new material. I realized at some moment that while GMing, I usually do the same, and that creates atmosphere (if it suits the NPC of the moment). I should really read more about Artaud’s techniques.
I’d recommend reading “The Theatre and Its Double.”
That captures the majority of Artaud’s vision and explains his reasoning behind the techniques of his Theatre of Cruelty.
While his work is often crude and always bizarre, it’s incredible how he is able to draw the audience in.
Though I can’t help but chuckle at the idea of using ALL of the Theatre of Cruelty techniques in a lecture (such as violent lighting, loud nonsensical screams, and unnatural body contortions.)
That might perhaps be too overwhelming (especially when covering material that will be on the test!) 😉
Wrote it down and will read, thank you.
Well, if I taught psychology or acting techniques, that could have been.) Alas, it is less applicable in teaching languages.
Thank you for this inspiring and well-written article. Your ideas have illuminated the game more than anything I have read in a long time. Caught in a tangle of rules, plot exigencies, and game balance, I often neglect the elements that make the story immersive and memorable: dizzying breaks from reality, visceral manifestations of archetypes, and the immediate emotions of necessity.
You suggested that these ideas are tools for “situations that demand drama, immersion, and intensity” and they are not “techniques to be used constantly.” I certainly agree that varying intensity is essential. Even Sturm und Drang needs occasional islands of calm, just as the story of Dorothy in Oz needs Toto as a tether to the comfort of familiarity.
Nonetheless, I wonder how Artaud might run a campaign. Perhaps a warm meal in an unfamiliar tavern on a snowy day would provide a simple respite between violent assaults. But perhaps even this is an opportunity for Artaud’s cruel surrealism. The town appears ordinary, and the players don’t discover the townspeople’s jingoism until our heroes are in the tavern. Slowly, it becomes apparent that no one there will acknowledge the party’s presence. This can be taken to absurd lengths: after a player character drapes a cloak over a patron’s head, the patron continues to sit quietly as if the cloak did not exist. After expecting to just get food and maybe have a social encounter that provides clues about upcoming adventures, the party instead sits silently eating rations outside in the snow behind the tavern.
When I think of my favorite films, many relentlessly provoke emotion, subvert reality, and convey meaning more symbolically than logically, including Pulp Fiction; City of Women; Nosferatu; and A Clockwork Orange. I wonder whether the key for collaborative storytelling is to vary emotions, use symbols efficaciously, and transcend the dualism of reality and absurdity?
Hi Karnstein!
Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words! It makes me very happy to know that you found this article inspiring.
While the rules and mechanics of the game are certainly important, I think that a huge amount of potential exists when looking at specific techniques and methods that set the group up to tell an even deeper story.
Just like a good story relies on pacing, varying intensity is also important to keep everyone interested. The examples you gave of Sturm und Drung as well as Dorothy and Toto are fantastic!
The example of a tavern that you gave is actually reminiscent of several pieces of Artaud’s work, especially his poetry and many of his letters. Much of his later work showed major themes of being ignored, alone, and outcast. However, he seemed to view that as being somewhat necessary for artists and heavily referenced Vincent Van Gogh as an example. It’s the type of surreal drama that comes from being “there but not there” in a way.
As DMs, we can learn so much from the masters of the stage and screen. I covered Tarantino in a previous article and am planning on writing a similar article to this one in a few months about either Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson, or Alfred Hitchcock. If one of those is particularly interesting to you, let me know! 🙂
Regarding your last question, I think Artaud would say that that’s correct.
Gathering around symbols/archetypes within the game but with very real emotional buy-in from the players, the group is able to explore new and deeper levels of collaborative storytelling than would have otherwise been possible without that emotional buy-in.
The trick is: how do you make it personal for the players (while staying respectful of personal boundaries, of course) and mentally take them away from the game table and into the world that is being created?
Exploring the lessons of any of those auteurs would be fascinating. My gut says that Kubrick’s impact on dungeon masters might be the most subversive, so perhaps that’s the way to go.
“How do you make it personal for the players?”
I also wonder about this. Much has been written about incorporating the player characters’ background, history, and personality into the story, making it personally relevant to the characters, which in turn draws in the players. This is a growing edge for me, and, as both dungeon master and player, I have only experienced limited success with this.
Tapping the unique complexes of the players’ psyches is another avenue, one which admittedly demands careful reflection. One of my most memorable roleplaying experiences occurred as a player. A close friend, who was also a player, was fond of pigs and had challenges around indecision. He played a wereboar who had died. In the afterlife, the character was confronted with deciding whether his life was worth living. We ran a LARP session late at night in a park. The player dug around in the sand, searching vainly for truffles, when the realization dawned on him that it was choosing, and not the choice itself, that mattered. For me, that moment exemplified the prospect of roleplaying being personal for a player.
Mostly, however, as DM, I’ve found that it works well to contribute story elements that are emotionally relevant to me. Archetypes are theoretically universal. Given adequate understanding of historical context and how to interpret works within a given medium, our great works of art transcend individual and cultural differences. Whatever is deeply significant for an artist is likely to move an audience as well, albeit some more than others.
Moreover, as a collaborative art, I see the DM’s job as offering opportunities for players to contribute plot points that can unfold in ways that help make it personal for them. After all, they are the experts in interpreting their own lives. As a DM, I try to provide rich soil, water, and sunlight so that the players can plant seeds that grow into the garden of the co-constructed narrative.
In some ways, this philosophy may seem at odds with Artaud’s mission. How can creating open spaces for possibilities be reconciled with forceful events that jolt players from complacency? I think the key is seeing the unity of destruction and creation. Like Kali, the DM tears down what is so that players can give life to something new.
It will probably be a few months, but I will do a similar breakdown of lessons that DMs can learn from Kubrick next then! 🙂
Your example of the DM providing the conditions for the players’ “seeds” to grow is very accurate, I think. In many ways, I would say that it’s a key answer in how to make an adventure feel personal for the players.
Artaud’s idea was that anyone can be reached with the “feeling” of what is being conveyed in a play if only you can get past their brain’s attempts to process and make sense of what is happening. To apply the approach of the Theatre of Cruelty, not fully communicating that “feeling” would come from a failure of getting around the audience’s ability to reason.
It’s a powerful technique, but it runs into a hurdle when it comes to D&D: not everybody comes to the D&D table wanting that experience.
Some people just want to play the game, hang out with their friends, eat snacks, and fight some monsters. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that!
But to create a sense of immersion and development, the first requirement is that the players want it.
In a group that wants that level of immersion but struggles to achieve it, such ideas can be incredibly powerful. But if there isn’t a desire for that type of collaborative storytelling, it can’t work.
I would say, especially in a group that also enjoys LARPing, that finding ways to create environments for that kind of development and immersion to take hold (and then be run with by the players) is the key. The DM creates a compelling enough environment and situation and then lets go (in Artaud’s concept of “organized anarchy”) for the players to guide from there.
From there, the DM needs only to guide the experience based on the interests and developments of the characters along with the adventure/story itself. The struggle is in breaking down those walls and getting that “buy-in” in the first place. 🙂
This is really good. I am not much of an actor. I was going to print the chaotic / mad ramblings of a telepathic monster on 3×5 cards, but now feel the inspiration to do it live. I wanted the thoughts to be separate to each player, but now I see it would be best to move around to each player and act out the telepathic thoughts. It will save time as well by the players not having to retell what their character heard.
Hi Thomas!
Thank you so much. I’m glad that this article inspired you to try something new!
If you get the opportunity to comment back, I’d love to hear how it goes. 🙂
Telepathic creatures (especially Nothics!) are an excellent opportunity to use some of the dramatic Theatre of Cruelty techniques to really mess with the PCs’ heads!