Peter Brook doesn’t fit into any box or category. He’s the author of the acclaimed book The Empty Space, an in-depth exploration of theatre and performance, and he’s directed films and musicals as well as plays and operas throughout his lifetime.
But perhaps most famously, he’s directed Shakespeare productions that have been known to push the boundaries of what theatre looks like in ways that are both strange and wonderful.
1) The Empty Space: Theatre cannot create anything from nothing; what it can do is provide a space into which an imaginary world can be invited.
Once the actors and designers have created that world in the theatre - to its full extent and without any incompleteness - all that remains is for someone who has experienced it to try and translate it into words.
And so, we find ourselves talking about one play and many plays-in-the-play. But if, on some level, every play contains other plays, then why shouldn't we talk about them too?
2) To Direct Shakespeare: In Act 5, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare gives an intricate description of how to perform the play before calling it a comedy in five acts.
With these cues, one can see that Shakespeare not only intended for it to be performed with attention paid to all four corners but also wanted it delivered as broadly as possible by limiting the distance between actors and increasing sound effects.
By allowing such performances is it hard not to believe that Shakespeare was especially conscious about every facet leading up to a performance?
3) A Midsummer Night's Dream: It was through his celebrated production of Midsummer Night's Dream that Brook received critical acclaim for his abilities as an innovator and avant-garde director.
The show opened in Paris in 1961 before transferring to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon, England later that year. A Midsummer Night's Dream was a notable departure from many Shakespeare productions at the time which tended to be heavily reliant on scenery and where acting relied largely on speeches rather than actions.
4) Biomechanics and Performance: Brook studies human interaction with one another and is most interested in how we can use different forms of performance to explore this exchange.
He explores not only what happens on stage but also the effect that it has on the audience.
For example, in Marat/Sade he wanted to see how it would affect people if they were forced to be inside an asylum rather than just watching an asylum from the outside. What resulted was literal and figurative insanity (Marat/Sade).
To learn more about Peter Brook:
brainly.com/question/13000508
