The Empty Space

Teorie Współczesnego Teatru

by Peter Brook

Adapted from a series of four lectures, originally delivered as the first of the Granada Northern Lectures Peter Brook's The Empty Space is an exploration of four aspects of theatre, 'Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate', published in Penguin Modern Classics.

'I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage'

In The Empty Space, groundbreaking director Peter Brook draws on a life in love with the stage to explore the issues facing any theatrical performance. Here he describes important developments in theatre from the last century, as well as smaller scale events, from productions by Stanislavsky to the rise of Method Acting, from Brecht's revolutionary alienation technique to the free form Happenings of the 1960s, and from the different styles of such great Shakespearean actors as John Gielgud and Paul Scofield to a joyous impromptu performance in the burnt-out shell of the Hamburg Opera just after the war. Passionate, unconventional and fascinating, his book shows how theatre defies rules, builds and shatters illusions and creates lasting memories for its audiences.

Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH CBE (b. 1925) is a highly influential British theatrical producer and director. During the 1950s he worked on many productions in Britain, Europe, and the USA, and in 1962 returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to join the newly established Royal Shakespeare Company. Throughout the next the 1960's he directed many ground breaking productions for the RSC before in 1970 forming The International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris.

If you enjoyed The Empty Space, you might like John Berger's Ways of Seeing, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'A brilliant book ... should be read by the many besides the passionate few to whom it will be required reading'
Daily Telegraph

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction, Plays, Drama, Art, Theory, Philosophy

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Peter Brook is a world-renowned theater director, staging innovative productions of the works of famous playwrights. A native of London, he has been based in France since the 1970s.

Peter Brook's parents were immigrant scientists from Russia. A precocious child with a distaste for formal education but a love of learning, Brook performed his own four-hour version of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the age of seven. After spending two years in Switzerland recovering from a glandular infection, Brook became one of the youngest undergraduates at Oxford University. At the same time he directed his first play in London, a production of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Brook made his directing debut at the Stratford Theatre at the age of 21, with a production of Love's Labours Lost.

Over the next several years, Brook directed both theater and opera, as well as designing the sets and costumes for his productions. He eventually grew disillusioned with opera, calling it "deadly theater." He directed prominent actors, including Laurence Olivier in Titus Andronicus and Paul Schofeld in a filmed King Lear. He also directed a film adaptation of Lord of the Flies. In 1962, he was named a director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Despite his popular successes, Brook sought out alternative ways to create vibrant, meaningful theater. He directed a season of experimental theater with the Royal Shakespeare Company, inspired by Antonin Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty." He sought to turn away from stars and to create an ensemble of actors who improvised during a long rehearsal period in a search of the meaning of "holy theater."

Out of this search came Brook's finest work. In 1964 he directed Genet's The Screens and Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade, for which he received seven major awards and introduced Glenda Jackson to the theater. Influenced by Brecht and Artaud, Marat/Sade shocked the audience with its insane asylum environment. In 1966 he developed US, a play about the Vietnam experience and the horrors of war. Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most important theater directors of this century and a man who profoundly influenced Brook, came to work with the company during this production. Brook also did an adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus by poet Ted Hughes, a who continued to collaborate with him for many years. The culmination of this phase of Brook's work was his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970). Using trapezes, juggling, and circus effects, Brook and his actors created a sense of magic, joy, and celebration in this interpretation of Shakespeare's play.

After this, Brook moved to Paris and founded the International Center of Theatre Research. He wanted to find a new form of theater that could speak to people worldwide--theater which was truly universal. He also wanted to work in an environment of unlimited rehearsal time in order to allow for a deep search-of-self for all involved. The first production that came out of this phase was Orghast (1971), which employed a new language developed by Ted Hughes. This production, performed at the ruins of Persepolis in Persia, used actors from many different countries.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.
The Empty Space ~~~ Peter Brook


Paul Scofield as Hamlet

I first read Peter Brook's The Empty Space when I was an undergrad. It was required reading for all theatre students on a directing tract. I devoured the book, but I'm not certain I digested the book. On re-reading this book, I not only digested the theories Brook set forth, but found it to be prophetic. Brook anticipated the decline of and problems professional theatre would encounter ~~$1,000.00 a seat tickets anyone?

The Empty Space was published in 1968 and it’s never been out of print since. What Peter Brook does is apply his very cool, analytical judgment to theatre as it is. He breaks theatre down into four different categories ~~ and these terms have now become standard. Those four types ~~ Deadly Theatre, Holy Theatre, Rough Theatre, & Immediate Theatre.


Vivien Leigh in Titus Andronicus

Deadly Theatre: Brook criticizes this form of theatre for being lifeless and uninspired. It often adheres to outdated traditions and fails to engage or challenge the audience. Deadly Theatre is prevalent in commercial productions that prioritize profit over artistic integrity.

Holy Theatre: This type of theatre aims to make the invisible visible, seeking to transcend everyday experiences and touch on deeper, spiritual truths ~~ think Angels in America.

Rough Theatre: This is characterized by its accessibility and connection to the audience, often using humor, satire, and direct engagement. Rough Theatre thrives in informal settings and is unafraid of vulgarity and spontaneity.

Immediate Theatre: This form of theatre emphasizes the present moment and the direct relationship between actors and audience. It is about creating a shared experience that is alive and responsive to the audience’s reactions. Immediate Theatre requires a high level of sensitivity and adaptability from the performers.


Glenda Jackson in Marat/Sade

But The Empty Space doesn’t just contain insights about making drama. It also has passages about, quite literally, the business of drama.

There’s a marvelous passage where Brook talks about being in New York and seeing young people queuing up at the Museum of Modern Art, paying next to nothing to get in. He looks at those people and thinks, Why are they queuing up for a gallery but not theatre? Brook concludes we have to make theatre not just simpler in style but also cheaper, and so more accessible. We have to find a way of discovering and encouraging that new audience. I think it’s a lesson theatre has not yet learnt ~~ every organization I know is breaking its back at the moment to find ways of getting a new audience in, but the cost is still out of control.


Brook’s Ground Breaking Production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

As a director Peter Brook was a pioneer; what he’s done in The Empty Space is to set out fundamental questions and principles, asking what is the act of theatre, why do we continue with it, what can it offer us that other mediums can’t? I think these questions are ones we’re still debating today. This is an essential book for any practitioner of theatre. Highly recommended.


Peter Brook

[Elisabeth M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alternately brilliant and boring. I think that Peter Brook is actually a profound man, but his writing on the theory of theatre gets tedious when he starts soliloquizing and forgets to include any means for the reader to put his abstractions into practice. At those times the book gets a self-infatuated tone, and loses believability. I spent most of the book slogging through, one paragraph at a time. That said, there are penetrating insights lodged within, and many times I felt he had unearthed a real gem.

[Cari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is excellent, but it's hampered by two things. One is Peter Brook's fault and one isn't:

1. It's a book about the current state of theater, written in 1968. As I was born in 1984, the author has literally no knowledge of any performance I have ever seen in my life, nor have I seen any of the performances he describes. So it's hard to relate his opinions about the state of theater to today, not knowing if I agree with his assessment of 1968.

2. The book is inscrutable and high-minded to a fault. I can't decide if I agree with him if I can't understand what the hell he's saying.

Still, it's a book about aiming high, so he's not going to dumb down his language for the groundlings. If you can fight your way through it and you're in the mood for some griping about theater, give it a shot. Of course, the book offers a lot of criticism without any suggestions for improvement (other than what basically amounts to "do better"), so you might just end up frustrated at the end. But I found myself wanting to highlight certain passages, and I never do that. He hits a lot of important points, and I'd love to read an updated version for 2011.

[Rosanna Threakall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was suggested reading for my acting class and I was told it would probably be too deep for our standards but I actually really enjoyed it and got a lot from it. I must read for any fellow drama nerd.

[Jamie Grefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having seen Brook's televised "The Tragedy of Hamlet," and his filmed version of "King Lear," not to mention, the idea of his most recent "Love is My Sin," I take his word for what it is: clear thoughts from one perspective of what the theater could be, how it should be, and what is should not be.

Brook separates theater into four slices: Deadly, Holy, Rough, and Immediate. In doing so, he opens up possibilities for the Dramatist and gives us a solid grounding in the more metaphysical aspects of the theater. He shows us how these modes overlap and divide, gives numerous examples, and spills his thoughts on the page as a master to a student.

I am most interested in Brook's interpretations of Shakespeare and this book expostulates on the possibilities of what a Shakespearean play could be or how it could be staged, or how it so often, to the chagrin of Brook, falls into the realm of Deadly Theater (gaudy, costumes, overly heightened, etc.) and how to move away from that. Taking Brook on his own terms and then reading Shakespeare will transform your understanding of Shakespeare, at least it did to me. If anyone knows of any other great imaginers of the Bard, please do let me know.

Brook leaves us with a simple formula for what theater could be. This is a man that believes in the power of the stage, the infinity of a moment, and the saving grace of theater, but is also well aware of the pitfalls, too. He's been there. He's still out there. For that, I'm glad.

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book that peers deeply into the heart of modern theatre. It's somewhat less systematic than the subtitle, with its hint of a rigorous typology, might lead us to expect. More a string of reflections that gravitate towards three main themes: the Context of modern theatre (Deadly Theatre), its Core Contribution (with Holy and Rough offering two complementary energies infusing life in theatre), and finally issues of Craft (wrapped into observations about Immediate Theatre). Brook's perspicacity is phenomenal. And his way of communicating these insights is very authoritative. There is much to learn also for readers who are not directly involved in theatre, but are dealing with challenges in teamwork and complex partnerships, or are, alternatively, involved in performances of all sorts.

[Märten Hallismaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Pole kahtlustki, et teater on väga eriline paik. Ta on nagu suurendusklaas ja ühtlasi nagu vähendav lääts.”

[Luke Reynolds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Although there were some useful tidbits of information, at this point, I want to move past historical examples and ravings of directing in the field and just learn some tips directly. Despite an interesting format, theatre divided by four types, Brook broke too much down and made me uninterested. These historical texts don't seem right for me, and I feel like I'm kind of done with older white men ranting about their experiences in theatre when they could be much more meaningful from people of color and other marginalized groups.

[Bryn]

I like my theater like I like my men: deadly, rough, holy, and immediate.

[Carolyn Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

More weighty than its page count would indicate, this slim volume is divided into the four sections indicated by the subtitle. Too long to be chapters, they're almost like long essays. What is good theatre? What is bad acting? There were some parts where I rolled my eyes to myself and thought "what hippy -dippy hooey is this?" , but by the end of the book I was left feeling like I'd just read a textbook, a learned treatise on the science and art of communicating inner truths. Peter Brook wrote this in the 60s, but it feels like it was written yesterday. Contrary to his closing words, this book is not going out of date. It never will. A must-read for those involved in the theatre.

[Nandakishore Mridula]

I am abandoning this. Nothing to do with the book or Brook's erudition, though - I am stuck in a reading slump and this is not the ideal book for revival.

Not rating It, either.

[Roman Brasoveanu · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a great director, Peter Brook is unquestionably an authority on theatre, but The Empty Space doesn’t reflect his artistic talent and comes across as an unsuccessful attempt at philosophy, full of platitudes and anecdotes which carry little theoretical value. Still, this book has merit as an intentionally poetic reflection on the life and career of a passionate lover and defender of drama as a medium.

Despite its aesthetic claims and artistic prescriptions, this book is not theoretical, as Brook says in the beginning of the fourth and final chapter. “But if anyone were to try to use it as a handbook, then I can definitely, warn him- there are no methods… anyone who attempts to reproduce them from my description is certain to be disappointed.”

The book begins with a chapter on ‘Deadly Theater,’ the author asserting that the theater needs to be ‘reborn’; it can no longer approach “the classics from the viewpoint that somewhere, someone has found out and defined how the play should be done.” This is vague and means only that theatre requires innovation. His following example will reveal the lack of meaning that the exhortation carries.

In a certain unknown opera, put on by two rival Operas, one from Formosa and the other from Pekin, “nothing was reborn” in the Formosan performance which made it a failure, compared to the rival, Pekin Opera which was “creating its ancient patterns afresh each night.” The discussion ends here, and what that could mean is unclear, however poetic it might be.

The gist of his argument is that theatre requires innovation, and for the same play to have vitality, it must experience change in attitude, rather than merely in scenery, costumes, and music.

“Grand opera, of course, is the Deadly Theatre carried to absurdity.” For the reason that it resists all change. What is needed in theatre is ‘experimenting’ and ‘real risk’- advice which lacks application.

Much consideration is given to economic factors unrelated to the theory of theatre. Consider his discussion of John Arden’s Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance which had received much bad press and offered free performances, attracting such enthusiastic crowds that the actors, “cheered by the warmth of the house, gave their best performance, which in turn earned them an ovation.” Are we to believe that actors performing at the Athenee are so emotionally volatile that the strength of their performances depends on the enthusiasm of the spectators?

Apparently so, and I have no authority against his experience, to dispute this claim, but it hardly makes sense. “In a sense there is nothing a spectator can actually do” and we agree, but he says “and yet there is a contradiction here that cannot be ignored, for everything depends on him.”

He tries on page 24 and 25 to explain the role of the audience in crafting the performance that the actor gives. He relays an ‘experiment’ done in an acting lecture he delivered. The book is full of these anecdotal experiments. What he ends up describing is merely a change in the actor’s emphasis when reading his lines after being advised to do so in front of his peers. Nothing is proven about the nature of the audience, nor is there shown to be an interaction between the audience and the actor.

He discusses how Stanislavsky’s method has proven dominant, but “In America today, the time is ripe for [Vsevolod] Meyerhold [‘biomechaniscs’] to appear, since a naturalistic representation of life no longer seems to Americans adequate to express the forces that drive them.” An interesting theoretical topic, but discussion ends immediately without elaboration.

On page 34. Without using the term, there is a discussion of French dissatisfaction with monologism in the novel, but Brook will never actually get to the point of discussing dialogic imagination and the hint is only there available to readers who are aware of other critics like Bakhtin who explain this shortcoming of the form of drama.

Brook suggests a dialectic between what we see and what we apprehend is captured by Shakespeare, which makes him the Bard par excellence. But is there really such a dialectic? How is this dialectical? There is no explanation.

Common are aphorisms not strictly related to the topic and too abstract to carry meaning, such as “If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is for the play to be heard, then you must conjure its sound from it.”

“We may make a personality cult of the conductor, but we are aware that he 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.”

He asserts that “theatre Is the last forum where idealism is still an open question” but this isn’t justified.

The Holy Theatre that Brook describes is a drama which can convey the sublime and deliver a transcendent experience. But it's not clear how that might come. He offers more aphorisms of little meaning: “the theatre working like the plague, by intoxication, by infection, by analogy, by magic, a theater in which the play, the Event itself, stands in place of a text.”

Praising Artaud, and surrealism as a means by which the theatre could become Holy again, he says Artaud ” wanted an audience that would drop all its defenses, that would allow itself to be perforated, shocked, startled and raped so that at the same time it could be filled with a powerful new charge.” The implication is a functionalist analysis of theatre and that it is shock, in this case, which ‘makes the invisible visible.’ He goes to give examples of three ‘visionaries’ who practice this manifestation, concluding that “we have exposed the sham [that the sublime isn’t the aim of the theatre, and that theatre must convince its audience that the art is holy rather than becoming holy] but we are rediscovering that a holy theatre is still what we need. So where should we look for it? In the clouds or on the ground?”

But who has ever said that theatre should not attempt to realize the sublime? With whom is he polemicizing?

The ‘Rough Theater’ is the anti-bourgeois and anti-decadence theatre that saves the day. This is a theme running through the book. Theatre, apparently, has been corrupted by a class of people who enjoy and augment the stuffiness and inaccessibility of the form. “The popular theatre, freed of unity of style, actually speaks a very sophisticated and stylish language” meaning that it somehow disarms its foolish audience and presents “what to regular theatregoers was incomprehensible.” Anarchy has freed the otherwise locked imagination.

The Holy and Rough Theatres reach for different, base, and infinite, energies in man’s soul.

The suggestion that Shakespeare is exceptional because he, and seemingly only most fully he, can “present man simultaneously in all his aspects: touch for touch, we can identify and withdraw.” The meaning of this statement is unclear, unfalsifiable, and certainly not justified by the immediately preceding analysis. The book is filled with lines like these. He ends the third chapter with another cryptic statement with no immediate relation to what he had been discussing: “To [capture the attention of the audience and compel its belief] we must prove there will be no trickery, nothing hidden. We must open our empty hands and show that really there is nothing up our sleeves.” This means nothing.

The fourth chapter is the least disagreeable and the most personal. Brook’s experience as an accomplished director to rub elbows with other greats is interesting by its lonesome.

The book carries infectious enthusiasm for theatre in its vignettes of stages across the world, actor and audience types, and shows gone right and wrong, but what it teaches is unclear and it has limited value to a person attempting to understand drama.

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only been trying to get around to reading this book for 7 or 8 years...

Brook explores his experience of theatre, though is very specific to state that it is only his experience so far and that everything will change, as theatre is always changing. He breaks theatre down into 4 categories, Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate. These, of course, can overlap and interplay at any time. Deadly theatre is theatre that is predicable, set in its ways, repetitive, passionless. It is theatre that does not speak to its audience and that the performer takes for granted. Brook says this is most theatre. Holy theatre is that theatre that touches something in its audience that causes them to experience ritual. In this section he speaks of Grotowski and Beckett. Rough theatre is the theatre of the masses. It is improvisation as well as theatre that allows for direct interaction with an audience. This is theatre that revels in sharing the room with its audience. He also includes most comedy and musical theatre in this section. He also discusses Brecht and his method of alienation of constantly reminding the audience that they are in a theatre. The Immediate theatre, Brook is less clear about. The importance of his immediate theatre is its nowness and its reaction to those watching it. He says theatre will only succeed when it becomes necessary in the lives not only of those who perform but those who watch. He gives the example of psychodrama.

[Esteban · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brook organiza sus ideas sobre el teatro con una metafísica de entrecasa. La aprovecha muy bien. No se molesta en aclarar si lo mortal, lo sagrado, lo tosco y lo inmediato son etapas o aspectos. Pero no le impide apelar a casos, y algunos de esos elementos se pueden llevar a otras formas de expresión. Lo mortal, por ejemplo, parece un peligro al que está expuesto el principiante que imita, y el profesional asimilado a un capital cultural decadente. Escribiendo desde el corazón de la tradición shakespearana, Brook conoce muy bien delgada pero crucial zona de exclusión entre ser conservador y ser reaccionario. Por eso, lo mortal tal como él lo define no es algo especifico del teatro. es algo que se traslada muy fácilmente a la música, la escritura y la política. También se pueden encontrar correspondencias para las dos categorías siguientes. La relación complicada entre lo mortal y lo tosco, por ejemplo, es una forma metafísica (y en este caso muy superior) de repensar la diferencia entre cultura de masas y cultura popular discutida en ciencias sociales. El último capítulo es donde Brook intenta encontrar lo específico del teatro. Habla de la posibilidad que ofrece de explorar contrafácticos, de volver a empezar, de borrar la pizarra de lo vivido. Concluye que en definitiva "una obra de teatro es juego".

[Mariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very difficult, maybe even impossible, to write a book like this and not sound pretentious at times. I rolled my eyes quite a bit along the way; but the final chapter, in which Brook finally admits he doesn't actually have any answers, but that he's just trying to ask the right questions, managed to endear itself to me. It turned what could easily have been a dated, forgettable book into an essay on the wonder and magic of the theatre. It reminded me of why I fell in love with it in the first place. And I really needed that today.

[Aurelija · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pats autorius ir knyga su visom nuorodom į teatro pasaulio grandus gal ir nėra iš lengvųjų, ypač žmogui, tiesiog įšokusiam į teatro teorijos lauką, bet knyga visai susiskaitė. Gal buvo kiek sudėtinga relate'inti, nemačius kokių tai klasikinių pastatymų ir vertinti autoriaus įžvalgas. Ir ne tik dėl to, kad jaučiuosi gan žalia teatro reikaluose, bet ir todėl, jog parašytos prieš pusę amžiaus tos įžvalgos gali pasirodyti nebe tokios auktualios. Bet vis dėlto, įstrigo kai kurie momentai, liečiantys grynai jausminį ir psichologinį išgyvenimą atliekant ar dalyvaujant teatro pasirodyme, aktoriaus santykį su savo amatu, draminiu kūriniu, publika. Tai va, visai nais.

[calima · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am finishing all the half read books that i started on my kindle at the end of the year, maybee to make room for me to read a real life book. This is part 1 out of 4

I don’t have much that i can say without sounding like a wanker, so i’ll say this: thought provoking, well written, bit boring, outdated.

[Henry! · Rating 4 out of 5]

valuable stuff, love all the writing on the audience

[lisete · Rating 3 out of 5]

pole veel vist piisavalt teatriinimene, mõte oli lugemise ajal pidevalt udus

[Casper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many people can easily go through life reading nothing but novels. I admit that is better than not reading at all, of course, but it wouldn’t do for me. While the novel is still my favourite genre, I always need to mix it with other reading matter: history, travel, short stories, graphic novels, essays, drama. I don’t think I’ve ever read a collection of essays on theater before, though.
The empty space is apparently an essential text for drama students; I’d never heard of it. Its idea is simple, to give an overview of the position of theatre at the end of the 1960’s. Writer Peter Brook, a celebrated director who worked with many famous actors and companies, divides his topic into four parts:
Read the rest of my review here

[Jason Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I found most interesting was Brook's examination of the role of the audience/spectator in theatre and how a "good house" can empower and participate with performers while a "bad house" can spoil a performance. While much of the book is more advice for actors and directors from the performance side, the parts which spoke to the connection between performers and audience members helped me to imagine what can be socially constructed between both groups within and during a live performance.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is mind-blowing. Brook builds a vivid conception of what theatre is and what it could be. As Brook describes the Deadly Theatre, he lays out a pointed critique of art under capitalism, and the rest of the book is masterfully imagining what play could be instead: play. I have a feeling I will be coming back to this again and again in my life.

[Héctor Toledo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro clave para entender todo el teatro desde los 60 hasta nuestros días.

[Nicholas Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit. Holy shit. Read it read it.

“To play needs much work. But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more.

A Play is a Play”

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book decades ago, and have only dipped into it now and again since. In 1980 I thought this was the theatre book to end all theatre books; the most essential read. Now I think such a thing doesn't exist (and Brook suggests the same at the end). This remains one of not-very-many essential reads for thinking about theatre. It is of its time - the mid-twentieth century - and yet Brook uncovers archetypal conceptions of theatre that are indispensable. In the chapter on "Rough Theatre" his reading of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Winter's Tale, and Lear are piercing and insightful. In the chapter on "Holy Theatre" his selection of Merce Cunningham, Samuel Beckett, and Jerzy Grotowski are good examples of writing "of its time" and also "beyond its time." And his reflection on the relation of stage to audience, and the question of the living audience, in the final chapter remains, as he says, the most essential concern of the theatre of the future. Mostly I'm struck by how profoundly human Brook's approach to art and artists is. Is it the best book about theatre ever written? There's no such thing. Is it one of the best books about theatre ever written? It absolutely is.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brook must be re-read over & over by anyone interested in The Theatre.

This is probably the third time I’ve read this book. The first time the ideals he strove for inspired me to consider a career in the Theatre. The second time Reality set in and those same ideals seemed like an impossibility and convinced me to follow other dreams.

Reading it this time practically drove me to tears, when I compared Peter Brooks’ beautiful vision to the ridiculously pale imitation, nay, the infuriating contradiction, of every rule or principle for what his Theatre could mean for a Society, that Today’s Theatre has become. On page after page he laid out a blueprint for Playwrights, Designers, Actors, Directors, and Critics to bring the Power of Live Performance to light, with examples from his own work as well as other icons of the Ages. Sadly, so few have followed the path he blazed.

The Empty Space is more than an important work by a Genius who devoted his Life to this Vision. It is the Bible for anyone who loves the possibility of reviving the Theatre for the 21st Century and beyond.

Five Stars. *****

[Bryan Edelmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a great book on theatre theory. Occasionally Peter Brooks metaphors would be a bit overwhelming and oftentimes overly long, but for the most part very engaging with interesting ideas presented very well. Two things I want to say about it.
1. As I said, it's a great book for theatre theory. However, because it's effectively just one man's perception on the types of theatre, there isn't much actionable advice or much to gleam in terms of actually producing theatre. Which is totally fine, but just know what you're getting into.
And 2. You have to have at LEAST read King Lear before you read this one. My dude loves King Lear and won't shut up about it. And if you're like me and you've never seen, read, or put on a production of King Lear, you're going to be missing out on quite a bit of this book.
8 Lears out of 10

[Magen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Peter Brook's theory. He was a worthy contemporary of Victor Turner, who is more relevant to my academic interests. Now that I've finally read The Peter Brook Book, I have to give a nod to the common phrase "Don't meet your heroes." Brook's knack for deconstructing and laying bare the essentials of theater are really exciting to me, but he writes about it with the flourish of a self-important actor. His meandering prose can lose the reader at times and is not conducive to what ought to be a rather calculative exercise. It's funny that he ends his book with "if" but doesn't deliver on the proof. No less the genius, Brook is best left out of his own discussion in a theory class for most theatre majors. I'll stick with Turner.

[Louise Van Cleemput · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - 4

Tijdloos!

“We have largely forgotten silence. It even embarrasses us; we clap our hands mechanically because we do not know what else to do, and we are unaware that silence is also permitted, that silence also is good.”

“There is no doubt that a theatre can be a very special place. It is like a magnifying glass, and also like a reducing lens. It is a small world, so it can easily be a pretty one. It is different from everyday life so it can easily be divorced from life.”

[Baba-S]

DNF
With all due respect to Peter Brook, this is full of theoretical and abstract terms that, if I'm being honest, go in one ear and out the other. I wanted to finish it, but I’m afraid I’d only be doing it just to say I did it without actually remembering anything. So, I’d rather save my time and read something else.