#my mother has spoken non stop about this possible reality and it's literally my greatest fuckin fear

[fluidfox123]

[kayleighdawes-blog]

Peter Brook.

Peter Brook was born on the 21st of March 1925 in London, England and is an English theatre and film director - based in France since the early 1970s. He is massively known and has won multiple Tony and Grammy awards in his time. “Peter Brook was the first person to win the International Ibsen Award. The 2008 International Ibsen Award was given to Peter Brook for his successful demonstration that all significant theatre has a unique ability to bring people together, that culture is something everyone can appreciate, and that no group or nation can claim ownership of a work of literature, either in the form of words or as performed on stage”.

Sources - www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Brook and http://www.internationalibsenaward.com/winners/peter-brook/www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Brook and http://www.internationalibsenaward.com/winners/peter-brook/

Peter brook is actually known as “the greatest living theatre director”, which is funny as that’s also what is said about Katie brook. Almost like the two are in competition, even though the have one element that is the complete opposite. Shakespeare. Katie Mitchell directed Shakespeare and said never again, but Peter Brook focuses very much on Shakespeare’s plays. My question then is… “is this why Katie Mitchell steers clear of Shakespeare?”, she may know that Peter Brook focuses a lot on Shakespeare, therefor, as they are in competition with eachother, steers clear as this is now known as Brook’s element. This seems like it could be a likely possibility.

Brook continued for a long while to put on Shakespeare plays, keeping them fresh and inventive, as well as those of many contemporary playwrights. These included; Measure for Measure (1950), The Winters Tale (1951), Titus Andronicus (1955), Hamlet (1955), The Tempest (1957) and King Lear (1962). These are a couple of Shakespeare pieces that Peter Brook took on. Towards the end of this period of Brooks work, was when he took interest in Antonin Artaud’s ‘theatre of cruelty’ and began to examine the theatre of provocation, with this as an influence.

Source - www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Brook

Theatre of cruelty was created by ‘the French mastermind’ - Antonin Artaud. Born in 1896 and died in 1948. He had many issues and spent a lot of time in an asylum, and when on the outside, addicted to opium. He isn’t a widely explored practitioner or taught by many teachers, as his way were just so hard to translate. You’d have to work extraordinarily hard to get to the bottom of his methods. However, his method ‘theatre of cruelty is known by many. Theatre of cruelty is aimed to shock all senses of its audience, sometimes using violent and dark images to effect these senses. Text was very little in his theatre, as dance and gesture became just as powerful as spoken word. He explored the relationship with the actors and the audience, his intention was to trap the audience in drama. Brook took from Antonin in the sense that text wasn't always needed. He would do a lot of non-verbal exercises with his actors, for example; school of fish and the walking/stopping as an ensemble game. These are 2 exercises that bring you close as an ensemble, as it's about connecting with your minds and feeling what eachother feels, in order to move at the same time, without literally communicating. These exercises play a huge part of becoming an ensemble and seeing how far you've actually come. Other company's would do this by speaking games, but Brook took the physical approach.

FACTS on Antonin Artaud; - he was influenced by surrealism - he believed life, and theatre, needed to change - theatre of cruelty was an enhanced double of real life - when performing this theatre, there was an appeal to the subconscious, freeing them of negativity - his theatre was to mirror not that of everyday life, but the reality of the extraordinary - text was reduced - movement often created violent or disturbing images on stage.

SOUCE - http://www.thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/

We then watched Katie Mitchell's 'The Five Truths', with Peter Brooks approach. This piece is based massively around silence, and setting the atmosphere through other elements. For example; a constant ticking clock throughout, especially when she is sorting through her fathers things. The constant ticking sound creates around the silence, and creates almost a crazy feel. It feels like your going insane when watching the piece, as this tick is constant. It almost sets the scene for what's about to happen. It gives you this feel that something bad is going to happen, almost a cinematic feel. She also uses a lot of humming throughout and a quick, sweet song. Both of these elements have a very foreign and enchanted feel to them, which makes sense as Peter Brook used to travel, a lot. He travelled around a lot of eastern areas, which is the feel that both these sound elements have. This approach did have a naturalistic feel to it in a sense, with the silence and obvious sadness but with a hint of absurdity, like it was taken slightly from Grotowski, but made milder... into Peter Brook form.

Source - https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PL5DE67813461897E6&v=YIjjLpshfCQ

Peter Brook took influence from many practitioners and merged them together. He was inspired by the experimental ways of; Grotowski, Brecht, and Meyerhold. His way of working is not a new one, he's taken many different elements from 'Avent - Garde contemporaries', which is French and actually means 'advanced guard', a bunch of experimental work and experimental people. However, his greatest influence was - Joan Littlewood. Joan little wood was known as 'the mother of modern theatre'. One of her most influential pieces was 'Oh, what a lovely war!" - in 1963. Before Brecht was even heard of, she was using his work. She used Spass, Gestus and sound. Her piece "Oh, what a lovely war!", was very sound/singing based, with a lot of dance and physical theatre as well. Which would make sense as she actually had influence from Rudolf Laben, who is massive in the physical theatre world.

Source - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/avant-garde

Joan Littlewood believed that first and foremost her actors were human beings, and secondly, they were actors. Which is interesting as I feel Peter Brook had this same approach. As he disciplined his actors brains, then would allow them to completely make it their own. He would constantly ask them "how do you think your character would be feeling?". Which is a very Stanislavski and Joan littlewood way, as it's keeping yourself and your character separate. He believed that for an actor to feel an emotion, they must search for it and find the emotion themselves, then he would help tweek it, once discovered. Which shows he was very much about actors independence.

Source - http://theatrecloud.com/news/joan-littlewood-her-life-and-approach-to-theatre

A way in which he took from Grotowski, that I have noticed, is that he loved minimalism! He believes finding a piece that you can strip down and make simple, is beautiful. However, you must find it yourself. He doesn't want you to follow him and believe that his way is 'everything must be simple', because it is not. He believes in trial and error, and if you find it can be done with almost a bare stage and minimal, then that's great, but this won't always be the case. So, I feel he took interest in Grotowski's way of a 'bare stage', however, rather than making that the only way, finding it through trail and error, and seeing if a simple stage is the case for that particular show.

Source - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aV6KXW0SF3A

"I can take an empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across an empty space, while someone else is watching him and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged". - The Empty Space by Peter Brook. This shows him believing you don't need 'total theatre', to create an atmosphere for your audience. Something so simple, if done correctly, is enough to connect with your audience emotionally, it doesn't take much.

Peter Brook really believed that you needed a human connection within a piece, and to allow your emotion to feed to the audience. He wanted to draw his audience in and allow them to sympathise with his actors. Which is the complete opposite to Brecht. This was obviously an element of Brecht's work that Book didn't necessarily take to. Brook says "how can anyone connect with a bear? You can't, so don't do it.". This is interesting as Brecht would have thought completely different, yet Brook took influence from him. This just shows me that when creating/directing, you can take elements from different practitioners, and still steer away from those other elements that don't really interest you as much. I feel it's about always being open minded.

"We're all tiny fragments of this huge jigsaw puzzle" - no one can know it all.