French writer, dramatist, actor and philosopher Antonin Artaud was BOTD in 1896. Born and raised in Marseilles, he was an intelligent but troubled student, and spent much of his adolescence in psychiatric care. His doctors prescribed him laudanum, starting a lifelong addiction to opiates. He moved to Paris in 1921 to became an actor, working with avant-garde director Charles Dullin. Artaud formulated his own dramatic theories in his 1932 Manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty, breaking with naturalistic text-based work and assaulting the audience’s senses with violent spectacle. His theories, practised in his short-lived troupe Théâtre Alfred Jarry, became hugely influential on 20th century theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd. In the 1920s, he made notable appearances in the highly-regarded silent films Napoléon and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc). Artaud travelled extensively in South America in the mid-1930s, ending up lost and delusional in Ireland. Deported back to France in 1937, he was institutionalised for the rest of his life. He died in 1948 aged 51, apparently by suicide after being diagnosed with cancer. Though little evidence exists about his sexuality or intimate relationships, his self-identification as an outsider and intense interest in transgression paved the way for more open artistic representation of homosexuality, earning him Honorary SuperGay status. His influence can be seen in the plays of Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett and Peter Weiss and the writings of philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva.