Godless Rituals: Theatre as a Venue for Transgression, According to Antonin Artaud and Hermann Nitsch
Godless Rituals: Theatre as a Venue for Transgression, According to Antonin Artaud and Hermann Nitsch

Summary/Abstract: The present study employs a systematic comparative analysis of Antonin Artaud’s and Hermann Nitsch’s key theoretical writings and major performances, situating them within the methodological framework of the performativity in theatre studies. The text examines the shared rejection of conventional, text-centred theatre in favour of ritualised, corporeally grounded action, while highlighting the conceptual divergence introduced by Nitsch’s process of Entmythologisierung, the removal of narrative and mythic layers to reveal ritual as pure, uninterpreted act. The analysis draws on the concept of “aesthetics of performativity” as developed by Erika Fischer-Lichte, interpreting Artaud’s Théâtre de la Cruauté (1932) and Héliogabale ou L’Anarchiste Couronné (1934) alongside Nitsch’s Manifest das Lamm (1964) and Die Eroberung von Jerusalem (1973), as well as their most ambitious performative works, Les Cenci and the Sechs-Tage Spiel. The comparison demonstrates how both artists mobilise violent physicality, sacrificial imagery, and the collapse of the actor-spectator divide to generate liminal experiences yet diverge in their treatment of myth: for Antonin Artaud, myth retains a metaphysical charge as a medium of spiritual shock; for Hermann Nitsch, it is stripped away to foreground the sensorial and material immediacy of the act itself. By tracing thematic and structural correspondences – such as the biomorphic conception of architecture, the taurobolium ritual, and the symbolism of blood – the study redefines Nitsch’s theatrical poetics as a radical, demythologised extension of Artaud’s vision.

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