Antonin Artaud (1896 - 1948) was a French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor and theatre director, widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde. Artaud's most significant contribution to drama theory is his "theater of cruelty" and, although it was not widely embraced in practice, the ideas have been, and continue to be, the subject of many essays on modern theater.