Brook Had More of a European Sensibility Than British

Peter Brook 1925-

The main thing about Brook that there isn’t a definite expression that can be used to describe his performance philosophy. His ideas are a product of work in progress and interaction and experiences. The reoccurring theme is that of The Empty Space.

Brook had more of a European sensibility than British.

Was influenced by film and he saw them as a window into the real world.

Theatre/Play- …Play is also a spool that unrolls; its truth comes to life shot by shot.

Far from employing techniques associated with montage and having a political viewpoint, his subsequent mainstream career firmly maintained an allegiance to an escapist/realist/decorative narrative.

He abandoned this expression of theatre to move from the dominance from the proscenium arch to a shared space in which audience and actors are ‘within the same field of life’.

Gurdjieff- influenced by his philosophy of exchanging information by word of mouth. Brook’s favoured method of working has always been thought the practical before the theoretical.

He was unconvinced by Brechtian theatre and its associated theory.

King Lear (1962) was a real watershed in his working life. He allowed himself to be influenced by the playwright Samuel Beckett and his play Endgame 1958 and Jan Kott, ton whose book Shakespeare our contemporary he has contributed an introduction. Both these men offered him an opportunity to rethink his approach to his text and specifically remove false sentimentality and as a result deny the audience spiritual reassurance. This experiment (two years) led to the now celebrated workshop he called The Theatre of Cruelty.

Artaud influences- more improvisational techniques used and a more fluid and rigorous process, where ‘sound gesture, rhythm, colour and music’ were the primary means of expression.

‘We were there not to learn but to unlearn, discarding hard-earned skills so as to discover something from the most innocent of our members…’

It was here in 1088 that the greatest test of his vision came to a reality in The Mahabharata, a retelling of the Indian epic. The three parts played over 8 hours, it stunned the imagination of its world audience with its vivid storytelling, visual magnificence and acting of refined athleticism.

‘…theatre is not just a place, not simply a profession, it is metaphor. It helps to make the process of life more clear.’

KING LEAR 1962

Working relationship with actor Paul Scofield- ‘The communication between us was now so deep it required few words’. However with other actors Brook encouraged endless experimentation allowing them to move and speak until they themselves had ‘found something’, this being achieved through the response to exhausting rehearsals as much as by reason.

SCENEOGR.APHY- tried to make the set look authentic. After the preview night, all the clothes were considered to new looking so a lot of work went into ‘breaking them down’ to make them look old and much used, as well as the furniture and props. PERFORMANE- ‘…having the performers share one space intimately with the audience offers an experience infinitely richer than dividing the space into what one can call two rooms…’

On the blinding of Gloucester, at the point where he was allowed to drag himself off, the house-lights came up to underline the audience’s complicity in the terror of the act.

THEATRE OF CRUELTY

In 1964, brook was given finding by the RSC to initiate a workshop to explore the writings of Artaud. His intentions here were vague, but he wanted to establish the beginnings of an ensemble, to experiment with voice and the body and in what he termed ‘research’ conditions, to free the actor from the constraints of the proscenium arch.

In performance to a select band of critics and colleagues, Brook reversed the actor-audience relationship by placing the audience on the floor and the actors on the raised rostra.

THE MARAT/SADE 1964

The stage lighting was constant throughout, bringing in the audience into the action and making them complicit in the outcome.

To link the audience with the action, the asylum director and his family were seated on-stage and occasionally the former interrupted the proceedings when the threatened to get out of hand. So- Brook had inmates (actors) involved in a re-enactment of past events under the direction of the Marquis de Sade (Brook) watched by an exclusive audience of notables watched in turn by the theatre audience- a potent interweaving of theatrical conventions.

OEDIPUS 1968

When not directly involved in the action the cast sat on the sidelines on benches.

The performance was notable for its complete fusion of text/sound. With the chorus scattered around the theatre not everyone heard every word, but at moments when sounds starting from the balcony spiralled to the chorus in the stalls, the whole theatre transformed into a vibrant sound-scape.

A MID SUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 1970

‘[He] asked them to look inside themselves to solve the mystery, to find their own individual rhythm, explore the limits of their own individual possibilities.’

He talked a lot about the ‘secret play’, the hidden text which would only be revealed by the rehearsal process. One way this was achieved was through a rehearsal in which Brook allowed complete chaos to reign, the space literally reduced to a wreck but from which brook was able, from his experience, to select and reject material for further work.

Completely redefined the stage- A box of tricks- the stage was a white box (box of tricks). The white worked as a blank canvas on which to ‘paint’ the play. The world of the box began and ended within the white box. It was a total vindication of Brook’s concept of ‘the empty space’.

‘On a nothingness, moment by moment, something can be conjured up- and then made to disappear. The bare stage is a form of nothingness…’

‘The onlooker is a partner who must be forgotten and still kept in mind: a gesture is statement, expression, communication…- it is always what Artaud calls signal through the flames- yet it implies a sharing of experience once contact is made.’

‘…celebrate something shared with the audience.’ ORGHAST AND PERSEPOLIS 1971

Brook was now established in Paris and his changed circumstances allowed for a completely new approach to the creative process:  With funding in place, commercial concerns were no longer a priority;  He was able to assemble a company and collaborators of his own choosing;  He had a permanent base in which to conduct his research;  He could begin to teach;  He could organise his own international performances where theory could be tested.

Rehearsal- workshops concentrated on three themes  Movement- sticks were used as a means to sharpen responses and as extensions to the body in group exercises. Focus on developing bodily awareness.  Voice and text- stage invented language was used in improvisations. The actors had different nationalities- this was their common form of communication.

There was now no division between process and product, the process was a continuous one that led naturally into a performance and beyond. It is interesting to note how much longer the preparation had become at this stage: the balance had radically shifted from the 4-week rehearsal period of Brook’s early career followed by a long run, to that of months of preparation followed by quite a limited and restricted performance schedule.

TRAVELS TO AFRICA 1972

‘We would be out on a limb, and this danger was both stimulating and essential.’

The aim above all was to return to a kind of naiveté in performance, to develop a ‘direct language of simplicity and precise economy’; for actors trained in a western tradition these qualities were the hardest to acquire and then to sustain. – the carpet was a way of doing this.

The carpet became both a theatrical expression of space and, in the dust of Africa, a definition between the earth of everyday life and the space for performance. Another Empty Space.

THE EMPTY SPACE REVISITED

It was at this time, with a largely untutored audience, that the concept of theatre as community and celebration were conceived and made important.

His unremitting energy and his search for the new has led to a continuous process of re- evaluation through practice, and his statements reflect this. He has established any number of spaces for theatre in his lifetime, not one of them the same as the other, and by so doing has redefined the validity of theatre as a shifting and evolving medium that reflects the mood of the time and the eternal truths it offers us.