The article discusses two theatrical concepts introduced at different periods of the 20th century: Theater of Cruelty of Antonin Artaud and Theater as Benevolent Anarchy of Tennessee Williams. The comparative analysis of the two systems makes it possible to discover certain common features and purposes and reveals the typological similarity between them. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.