Artaud Theater

Travis Grady explores the lobby

Location

Central Silent Hill

Key(s)

Balcony Key
Stage Office Key
Motel Key

Floors

Two

Boss(es)

Caliban

Appearances

Silent Hill: Origins

The Artaud Theater is a tourist location within Central Silent Hill appearing in Silent Hill: Origins. The theater is home to numerous plays, musicals and actors that want to make it big. It is quite large. It has some faulty wiring, but people still seem to work there. The theater also hosts many Shakespearean style plays.

Silent Hill: Origins

Travis Grady investigates the theater on his adventure in the dangerous world of Silent Hill. He finds, however, that the Artaud Theater, like almost anything in Silent Hill, still has a Fog World counterpart as well as an Otherworld version.

Within both of these realms two strange but dangerous creatures live, being introduced the first time at Artaud Theather. The first is the Ariel, and at the end of Travis's quest through the theater, he faces a mini-boss fight against a new beast: the Caliban, making the theater as unsafe as the rest of the town.

Design

The Artaud Theater, like any other, has the same features that accommodate an actor or playwright and is capable of hosting many theatrical festivals. Many tourists, and also many citizens of the town, would come here to watch various styles and types of productions which were both for children and adults, regardless of age. The Artaud Theater would offer many forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form. It improved strict definitions of tragedy and comedy as well as other forms like puppet theater (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions).

Plays were usually produced by a production team that commonly includes a scenic designer, lighting designer, costume designer, sound designer, a stage manager and also a product manager.

Next to the stage is a small room, the Curtain Control Room, from where the stage manager controls various functions of the stage.

The back section of the Artaud Theater features dressing rooms, scenery workshops, storage rooms for costumes and other scenery pieces, the offices and anything that covers the needs of a production team as well the need for a better organization of the whole theater. On the second floor are the catwalks where the lighting can be controlled or configured for each theatrical show.

The Artaud Theater also hosts various non-profit theater companies that produce their own seasons for the local people to enjoy, improving the relations of the Theater's companies with the local populations of Silent Hill and probably Shepherd's Glen, and strengthening the peoples' interest for culture and art tradition.

The Stage

The stage is a designated space for the performance of theatrical productions. It serves as a space for actors or performers and a focal point for the members of the audience. Because of this, it serves as one of the most important aspects of the Artaud Theater. In Silent Hill: Origins, the stage, somehow, is linked with other "dimensions", where Travis Grady manages to teleport to, by touching a mirror or lifting the safety curtains. Those "dimensions" were a forest and a library:

Unknown Forest

The Unknown Forest can be found when Travis lifts the safety curtain and touches a mirror while the stage is in its forest theme. There is also a key that can be found in one of the trees that will help Travis progress.

Unknown Library

The Unknown Library is filled with notes and book pages. This library can be accessed by lifting the safety curtain and entering the Otherworld when the stage is in its library theme. In the library, Travis can find the "Repression and Coercion", "Astral Projection: The Perfect Assassin?", "An Id Torn in Two" and "Manifestation of Delusions" memos.

Owl Cave

In order to reach the Caliban, the player must solve various puzzles in Artaud Theater to access the cave set. One of the notes found mentions this set being based upon a cave in the Silent Hill area called Owl Cave.

Trivia

• The monsters in Artaud Theater are based off of characters or themes from Shakespeare's body of work, specifically The Tempest.
• The theater is named after French playwright Antonin Artaud. Artaud is infamous for his essays on the Theatre of Cruelty, which was a type of theatre that focused on surrealism and making the audience uncomfortable or scared.
• The Owl Cave is a location in David Lynch's supernatural thriller series Twin Peaks.

Gallery

Travis outside the theater

The Artaud Theater on the set of the film

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