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 "Theatre of Cruelty", the ideas of which have been, and continue to be, the subject of influence for modern theatre and contemporary thought.

Joel White completed a joint European Masters in Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University, UK, (CREMP) and Paris VIII (Saint-Denis), France, and holds a PhD in French Philosophy from King's College London, UK. He has published on the work of Artaud in Performance Philosophy, Shakespeare, and Walter Benjamin in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. He is current the executive editor of Technophany: Journal of Philosophy and Technology.