I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.
Antonin ArtaudRead
The actor is an athlete of the heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the emotional vigor and dedication required in acting, likening it to the physical demands of athletics.
Antonin Artaud's quote, 'The actor is an athlete of the heart,' suggests that performing arts, particularly acting, require intense emotional labor and resilience akin to the physical exertion needed in sports. It emphasizes that an actor must train and condition their emotional responses to connect authentically with their roles, much like an athlete hones their physical capabilities to excel in sports.
Themes
ActingEmotionAthletePerformanceHeart
In practice
Example use cases
During a theater workshop, I quoted Artaud to inspire actors to dive deeper into their emotional performances.
More from Antonin Artaud
All quotes βCruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.
Antonin ArtaudRead
I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.
Antonin ArtaudRead
If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
Antonin ArtaudRead
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin ArtaudRead
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt . . .
Antonin ArtaudRead
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