Peter Brook (1925 -2022)

Peter Brook

Short Biography

Peter Brook (1925 -2022)

British theatrical producer and director. Known for his experimental productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. He began working with the Paris-based Le Centre International de Creations Theatrales in 1970. Films he has directed include Lord of the Flies (1962) and Meeting with Remarkable Men (1979). His work was inspired by the theories of experimental theatre of Grotowski, Brecht, Meyerhold and theatre of cruelty of Antonin Artaud.
 

Peter Brook quotes...

Quotes on preparation of actors

• «The freedom of improvisation was last week, and you can't get that freedom back unless you have mastery of the material. The spur of the moment has to come of actually knowing what is and what isn't».

Quotes on theatre and acting

• «The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good».
• «Many audiences all over the world will answer positively from their own experience that they have seen the face of the invisible through an experience on the stage that transcended their experience in life. They will maintain that Oedipus or Berenice or Hamlet or The Three Sisters performed with beauty and with love fires the spirit and gives them a reminder that daily drabness is not necessarily all».
• «We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us».