French · 1896–1948
French poet, actor, and theorist who reimagined theater as ritual assault. Born in Marseille, he acted for film and stage while suffering mental illness and addiction. The Theatre and Its Double proposed a theater of cruelty—not sadism but visceral, transformative experience. He spent years in psychiatric hospitals, received electroshock therapy, and emerged to write his most extreme work. Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society won a prize weeks before his death. His influence on performance art and avant-garde theater is immeasurable.