Editing Surrealism (section)

===Surrealist theatre===
The word ''surrealist'' was first used by Apollinaire to describe his 1917 play ''[[The Breasts of Tiresias|Les Mamelles de Tirésias]]'' ("The Breasts of Tiresias"), which was later [[Les mamelles de Tirésias|adapted into an opera]] by [[Francis Poulenc]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}}

[[Roger Vitrac]]'s ''The Mysteries of Love'' (1927) and ''Victor, or The Children Take Over'' (1928) are often considered the best examples of Surrealist theatre, despite his expulsion from the movement in 1926.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rapti|first=Vassiliki|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MOEoDAAAQBAJ&q=Roger+Vitrac:+Un+Reprouv%C3%A9+du+Surr%C3%A9alisme+review&pg=PA3|title=Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond|date=2016-05-13|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-10309-7|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Auslander|first=Philip|date=1980|title=Surrealism in the Theatre: The Plays of Roger Vitrac|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3206891|journal=Theatre Journal|volume=32|issue=3|pages=357–369|doi=10.2307/3206891|jstor=3206891|issn=0192-2882}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/9781118476215|title=A Companion to Dada and Surrealism: Hopkins/A Companion to Dada and Surrealism|date=2016-05-24|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc|isbn=978-1-118-47621-5|editor-last=Hopkins|editor-first=David|location=Hoboken, NJ|language=en|doi=10.1002/9781118476215}}</ref> The plays were staged at the [[Theatre Alfred Jarry]], the theatre Vitrac co-founded with [[Antonin Artaud]], another early Surrealist who was expelled from the movement.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jannarone|first=Kimberly|date=2005|title=The Theatre before Its Double: Artaud Directs in the Alfred Jarry Theatre|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0040557405000153/type/journal_article|journal=Theatre Survey|language=en|volume=46|issue=2|pages=247–273|doi=10.1017/S0040557405000153|s2cid=194096618|issn=0040-5574|via=}}</ref>

Following his collaboration with Vitrac, Artaud would extend Surrealist thought through his theory of the [[Theatre of Cruelty]]. Artaud rejected the majority of Western theatre as a perversion of its original intent, which he felt should be a mystical, metaphysical experience.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Artaud|first=Antonin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bmf8CMzu3kIC&q=the+theatre+and+its+double|title=The Theater and Its Double|date=1958|publisher=Grove Press|isbn=978-0-8021-5030-1|language=en}}</ref> Instead, he envisioned a theatre that would be immediate and direct, linking the unconscious minds of performers and spectators in a sort of ritual event, Artaud created  in which emotions, feelings, and the metaphysical were expressed not through language but physically, creating a mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm |title=The Theatre Of The Absurd |publisher=Arts.gla.ac.uk |access-date=2009-12-26 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090823075755/http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm |archive-date=2009-08-23 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.holycross.edu/departments/theatre/eisser/semiotics.html |title=Artaud and Semiotics |publisher=Holycross.edu |access-date=2009-12-26 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080906153307/http://www.holycross.edu/departments/theatre/eisser/semiotics.html |archive-date=2008-09-06 }}</ref>

The Spanish playwright and director [[Federico García Lorca]], also experimented with surrealism, particularly in his plays ''[[The Public (play)|The Public]]'' (1930), ''[[When Five Years Pass]]'' (1931), and ''[[Play Without a Title]]'' (1935). Other surrealist plays include Aragon's ''Backs to the Wall'' (1925).<ref>Louis Aragon, ''Backs to the Wall'', in ''The Drama Review'' 18.4 (Dec. 1974): 88–107.</ref> [[Gertrude Stein]]'s opera ''[[Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights]]'' (1938) has also been described as "American Surrealism", though it is also related to a theatrical form of [[cubism]].<ref>Bert Cardullo and Robert Knoff, eds. ''Theater of the Avant-Garde 1890–1950: A Critical Anthology''. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2001. 421–495.</ref>