The Theatre of Cruelty is a concept in Antonin Artaud's book Theatre and its Double . By cruelty, he meant not sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality which, he said, lies like a shroud over our perceptions. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language halfway-between thought and gesture. Antonin Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all expression is physical expression in space.

The Theatre of Cruelty was Artaud's attempt to not only revolutionize theatre, but also it was his attempt to free l'esprit (roughly translated to mean the combination of mind and soul) from the stifling grip of culture.

Stephen Barbar notes in his book, Artaud: Blows and Bombs, that "the Theatre of Cruelty has often been called an impossible theatre -- vital for the purity of inspiration which it generated, but hopelessly vague and metaphorical in its concrete detail." This notion of the impossibility of Artaud's theatre has not stoped others from utilizing his principles, most notably by Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski.

See:Antonin Artaud

Fantasy author Terry Pratchett wrote a short story named after this concept as part of his Discworld series – see Theatre of Cruelty (Discworld).