Rejecting the theater of his day, he tried to eliminate the spoken word from drama as much as possible, thus jolting the audience and forcing them to contemplate inner meaning.
A contemporary of Brecht, this Frenchman compared his own ideas to the plague, but meant it in a good way.  Well, he did suffer from mental illness for many years.  Rejecting the theater of his day, he tried to eliminate the spoken word from drama as much as possible, thus jolting the audience and forcing them to contemplate inner meaning. If this seems a tad ambiguous, you're not alone:  he is hailed as a great influence on theater, partially because of the opposing interpretations of his few works.  FTP, name this author of the essay collection The Theater and Its Double, the progenitor of the "theater of cruelty."
A contemporary of Brecht, this Frenchman compared his own ideas to the plague, but meant it in a good way.  
Antonin Artaud