The Theatre of Cruelty French: Théâtre de la Cruauté is a concept in Antonin Artaud’s book The Theatre and its Double. “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theatre is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds” Artaud, The Theatre and its Double. By cruelty, he meant not sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, austere, physical determination to shatter the false reality which, he said, “lies like a shroud over our perceptions.”