Theatre of Cruelty: The Scream of Silence in Saved by Edward Bond

THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY

For the Theatre of Cruelty, Antonin Artaud, a French playwright, is the most significant name of the age because he theorizes the Theatre of Cruelty into the stage. He advocates that a change is necessary in order to bring the ritualistic origins of theatre back to the stage. In this regard, there is a shift from text to performance. According to him, the core of the attention should be audience. So, he uses the violence as a tool in his theatre in order to capture and shake the audience, who ignores the violence in society, to awake them into harsh realities of the world.

In addition, Artaud believes that the violance is a part of human nature. Despite the fact that people accept themselves as civilized, they have a tendency to the violence due to their nature. Nevertheless, people should encounter with violence as a way of controlling this part of the nature rather than ignoring this fact. In this respect, the violence used in this kind of theatre is given to the audience not for the sake of itself, but its aim is to purge the tendency and oppression of people.

The infamous Saved pram scene, once banned, performed in 1972

EDWARD BOND- SAVED

Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty gives Edward Bond an inspiration to create his own style called as the Theatre of Violence, and he becomes the representor of this theatre in the British stage. In this aspect, he does not hesitate to bring any violent actions on the stage. In his theatre of violence, he tend to not only questions the causes of violence but also he focuses on the consequences of it. He demonstrates that the society should change which is the main function of the violence's presentation in Bond's play; therefore, he uses extreme violence to persuade his audiences to improve the system in the society.

From the beginning of the play to the end, the cry of the baby does not end, but no one in the play cares her crying including her own mother. In this respect, the mother of the baby,Pam is quite criticized because of her indifference to her baby. However, Pam is the another character who does not have any emotional relationship with her partner and her family living with them as a miserable character who is in need of love, attention, and affection. Unfortunately, Pam fails to be a mother because she does not know how to love someone, and she has never been loved by someone including her own parents .

The scene where the group attacks the baby actually is not related to the action itself. In fact, the act of violence demonstrates their loyalty to each other in order not to be marginalized by other members of the group becuase they also search for the sense of belonging just like Pam herself.

Saved – The Infamous Baby Stoning Scene

Eventually, we can advocate that the baby is the saved one from the wretched world where all the characters suffer from the lack of love and the search for the sense of belonging whether to someone or to a group. I hope humans do not lose their sense of tenderness anymore.