Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook, CH, CBEis an English theatre and film director who has been based in France since the early 1970s. He has won multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia. He has been called "our greatest living theatre director"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth21 March 1925
Peter Brook quotes about
attitude expression needs
A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.
distance reality myth
The closeness of reality and the distance of myth, because if there is no distance you aren't amazed, and if there is no closeness you aren't moved.
law community theatre
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.
simple two directors
The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.
theatre
Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.
meaningful theatre rehearsal
The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.
character opposites ideas
Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore.
past light giving
Shakespeare doesn't belong to the past. If his material is valid, it is valid now. It's like coal. The only meaningfulness of a piece of coal starts and finishes with its combustion, giving us light and heat. And that to me is Shakespeare.
drama understanding theatre
Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.
responsibility
You have to live to the responsibility of the person who has won, which is even greater than the responsibility of a person who has lost.
two space stage
A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.
thinking long desire
It takes a long while for a director to cease thinking in terms of the result he desires and instead concentrate on discovering the source of energy in the actor from which true impulses arise.
men space theatre
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.