B. 1925 London

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Peter Brook

• B. 1925 London
• Educated Oxford
• 1970 formed CIRT
• International Centre for Theatre Research
• Bouffe du Nord,
• Paris

2
Influences

• Artaud
• Brecht
• Meyerhold
• Grotowski

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The Centre's Aims (for Brook)

• Responsibility to theatre-going audiences,
  remembering that, as a performing group, we
  cannot survive without a relationship with the
  people who keep the theatre in existence
• To create a relationship with the people who
  would never cross the door to a theatre in a
  thousand years, by seeing them on their own
  ground in schools, meeting places and open-air
  places

4
continued....

• The responsibility to itself and its craft.the
  actormust constantlydevelop himself in relation
  to othersthrough group exercisesand, at the
  same time, increase the general understanding of
  the mysterious nature of that craft itself by
  trying out things that have not been tried
  before, Kaleidoscope 1978

5
...and....oooh, another one !

• Our first principle, we decided, was to make
  culture, in the sense of culture that turns milk
  into yoghurt - we aimed to create a nucleus of
  actors who could later bring ferment to any wider
  group with whom they worked. In this way, we
  hoped that the special privileged conditions we
  were making for a small number of people could
  eventually enter into the theatres mainstream

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The Actors

• CIRT took established actors from all over the
  world to extend them
• Looked for people to bring different
  colours-something that goes through to the soul
• Sense of the individual but within a team
• ..the real exercise with a group of actors is
  not for the person by himself.its to make the
  group more sensitive to itself.

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...basic requirements

• Active research and preparation as clearing of
  paths - a point where body, intellect and
  emotions are open
• Emphasis on preparation rather than training
• Like Grotowskis via negativa, unlearning the
  actor - no box of tricks
• PB Bring everything back to the level where
  there is no effort.

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The BIG question

• What is theatre?

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How they tried to get there

• Exercises and games
• Improvised performances - carpet shows
• Touring
• Language
• Sense of community
• TIME !

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To get to where they can.....

• develop actors capacity to articulate inner
  impulses, conveying them externally -
  Transparency
• make these forms as simple and economic ie clear,
  as possible - distillation -
• unsettle actors habitual responses and open up
  different energies, using different performing
  conditions and audiences
• use structure and play as interwoven supports

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Continued.....

• use research as self-research - evolution and
  individual development in which theatre is the
  means but not the end. Theatre as a means to go
  beyond theatre
• Theatre as re-membering mythical narratives or
  fables actualised here and now thus re-uniting
  the community, in all its diversity, within the
  same shared experience

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Some productions - 'Orghast' 1971

• Trying to create an international language of
  sound, an exploration of the musical power of
  language in ancient rituals where sound is
  everything
• With Ted Hughes
• Language and production called Orghast

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'Mahabarata' 1985

• Epic Indian poem 15 times longer than the Bible
• 10 years to rehearse
• Nine hour adaptation, 1985
• Toured in English and French
• Because it cover(s) the whole of human
  experience

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continued.....(yes, again)

• ..Brook in fact used the Mahabharata to
  revolutionize theatre itself, and to assert it as
  spectacle and is thus a bold attempt to give
  theatre life again Vijay Mishra, "The Great
  Indian Epic and Peter Brook," in Meanjin, 1988

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Qui est la? 1996

• adaptation of Hamlet
• the performance mixes scenes from the play-ending
  in the death of Ophelia-with a discussion among
  the actors on theories of acting.These passages
  are culled from Craig,Meyerhold,Stanislavsky,Brech
  t and Artaud
• bare stage, 3 chairs, no French actors

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Quotes on...the process

• Shoot first, ask questions afterwards is
  experience first, and only afterwards try to
  discover what that means. That goes through every
  side of the experience, including rehearsal,
  preparation, even like tonight, talking about
  theatre

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...on the CIRT...

• We wanted to get away from the idea of a
  company, and yet we did not want to shut
  ourselves away from the world, in a laboratory

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And finally (hurrah!) on theatre...

• Read off the paper Barry ! (P2)

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Further reading

• Peter Brook A Theatrical Casebook comiled by
  David Williams
• Peter Brook and the Mahabarata edited by David
  Williams
• The Open Door Thoughts on Acting and Theatre
• lots of other books
• the Internet
• interview on The South Bank Show