Peter Brook

Context

Peter Brook is an English theatre and film director, who has been based in France since the early 1970s. He was born on 21st March 1925 in England. He has won multiple awards such as Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia, all for his work in theatre and film He has been called ‘our greatest living theatre director.’ His main work includes The Deadly theatre, The Holy Theatre, The Rough theatre and The Immediate theatre.I will talk about his most important concepts of 'deadly theatre' and 'holy theatre' and how they juxtapose each other Brook wanted to answer the question of ‘How is theatre still relevant today?’

Deadly theatre

Deadly theatre means ‘bad theatre’ which means that people may take it for granted. This is the most seen form of theatre. Peter Brook describes ‘The Deadly theatre’ as a theatre of dullness. He is showing that this kind of theatre has no deep feelings or emotions for an audience. He believes that this is a commercial form of theatre set up in order to make money. It's the theatre of imitation. There is no connection between audience and theatre production in any way. Deadly theatre may fall into two categories. The first category is ‘Lack of human honesty in the production and lack of straightness in honesty’. He believes that people and society are unfair towards theatre, actors and designers. They stopped saying what they really think and feel.

Holy Theatre

There are two types of Holy Theatre that Brook refers to in his book. The first definition is a performance that is ritualistic or almost religious. The audience joins the performers in an attempt to achieve a personal transformative, emotive and intelligent piece of theatre. The second definition refers to dedicated and committed theatre professionals who give their lives to creating theatre which achieves the same transformative journeys that once existed in religious rituals which no longer occur. He wanted to bring back a liveliness and passion that he thought had been lost. The plays usually focus on contemporary life and personal issues. Furthermore, they usually avoid the traditional or usual venues such as Broadway, the regional and academic theatres.

Exercises

We performed various execicies based around the works of Peter Brook. This whole session was all about working with impulses and using our emotion centres. The first exercise illustrated how you can take away action and still have an interesting performance. Two people had to sit at the front of the class and stare at the wall; except one of them had to clear her mind of all thoughts whilst I had to focus on an intense feeling such as anger. They were discouraged from using facial expression this became very difficult as so much of an emotion id portrayed through sound, body language and facial expressions. The class were asked who was most interesting to watch. Most people said the actor trying to portray the emotion of anger because they were intrigued by their eyes and wanted to understand what was going on behind them. I found the actor portraying anger interesting to watch as I could see more of a character. This exercise showed me how you don't even need actions, gestures, movement or even text to create an emotional performance. All you need is an impulse. This exercise continued further. However, they were given additional instructions. One group were given the instruction to show the emotion using a body part such as their neck or their fingers. The movement ranged from tapping fingers to tensing shoulders. One actor tensed his shoulders a lot in order to demonstrate the emotion of anger. I found this very interesting to watch as his shoulders kept getting tenser which showed the anger building up. Another exercise we did was working with any intense feeling and then vocalising or physicalising it. After this, another group went up and were given another instruction of letting the emotion build so much that a noise came out when reaching the climax of the emotion felt. I think it was easier to portray a negative emotion such as sadness or anger as this can be pushed to a further extreme. One actor showed his anger building up before slamming the floor in rage. This demonstrated the steps of how anger builds up before speech was given. This was effective to watch as it made me understand that I should really build up my emotions internally before showing it externally and, finally, speaking to express the emotion further. This exercise helped to show me how to sustain and extreme emotion and how an impulse can grow into full voice and movement. This relates to a monologue and shows how the emotion must build up and reach certain climactic moments rather than staying on one level as that is less entertaining and less realistic. One of the final exercises we did was to get your partner to do an action using no verbal or physical communication. We could only use facial expression and our eyes. My partner was Kai and we actually achieved this. It was more of a trial and error exercise. I wanted him to jump up and down. I think he was able to read the slight changes in my face. This exercise demonstrated how it if you play close attention you can through unspoken communication achieve many things. However it was unclear how we managed to actually achieve this. Our final exercise involved showing an extreme emotion. In this, Jack put some strange music on (involving silence and sharp introductions to vocals) and he told us to close our eyes and move into an emotion using it. I chose the emotion of fear and imagined I was being hiding and my life depended on not being found. This forced me to show a real and honest emotion through my body language and facial expressions. When Jack began to count down from 10, I could build my fear growing before producing a sound. This exercise was very effective because I started to understand how effective it is feel the emotion with my body before trying to engage it with speech therefore making me feel that I can understand the basics of Brook's beliefs.