In 1968 John Gielgud, wearing a black rollneck sweater, starred in a notorious production of Seneca’s Oedipus, in a new version by Ted Hughes, directed by Peter Brook for the National Theatre, still then housed at the Old Vic. As a young programme seller, I was mesmerised by the unusual chorus work featuring actors in the auditorium lashed to pillars, and the emphasis on ritual culminating in a bacchanalian dance around an enormous golden phallus. Here was Brook making a distinct break with the conventional (or “deadly”) theatre of the time.
Appreciations and obituaries of Peter Brook, who died on July 2nd, have paid due attention to his immense influence over the theatre, his daring and innovation and his intellectual curiosity. Productions for the RSC in the 1960s – King Lear starring Paul Scofield, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (or to give it its full title, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade), featuring a febrile Glenda Jackson, and US, Brook’s challenging response to the Vietnam War – are testament to these qualities. They also reflect his interest in Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, which he explored in a series of workshops at LAMDA.
Then in 1970 came the legendary production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in a white set and featuring circus skills, which changed approaches to directing Shakespeare for ever. In rehearsal, Brook was exacting. Sara Kestelman, who played Titania/ Hippolyta, describes nervously learning to spin and throw plates with an equally short-sighted Alan Howard, playing Oberon. (link below)
Peter Brook with Blanche Marvin
For 30 years Peter Brook was based at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, carrying out theatre research, putting on shows in the shabby old music hall building. He still sometimes came to the UK, bringing, among other productions, The Mahabharata, an unforgettable nine-hour epic, based on an ancient Sanskrit text, staged at the Tramway in Glasgow with a multi-national cast, and his pared down, distilled, rearranged Hamlet, “for today”, with Adrian Lester as the prince.
I met Brook in Manchester at the Contact Theatre in 1994 when he was directing The Man Who, based on Oliver Sachs’ bookThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. It was not widely known that he quietly set up workshops in schools wherever he toured and, as the then arts editor of The Times Educational Supplement, I was intrigued. He was persuaded to talk to me, courteously, in general terms, but what actually happened had to remain between him and the young people and teachers he met without fanfare. It took a while to get the conversation started anyway as a photographer had arrived to take his portrait and, curious as ever about absolutely everything, he wanted a minutely detailed description of the workings of the camera.
Brook’s most influential book was The Empty Space. Its opening sentences continue to resonate, decades later: “I CAN take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Blanche Marvin, much of an age with Brook, founded the annual Empty Space Awards to acknowledge his influence and to honour theatre in small and innovative spaces. He usually sent a message – heartfelt, sometimes mystical – to be read in his absence, but on the last occasion the awards were presented, in 2017, he came in person. The photo shows him, deep in conversation with Blanche, after the event on that day.