In this volume, distinguished director Peter Brook provides candid answers to questions on his work and philosophy. Topics covered range from his innovative, award-winning production of Marat/Sade to his film and stage version of King Lear.
Peter Brook (1925-2022) was a British theatre director, noted for his strikingly original productions. The child of Russian emigrés, Brook made his debut at the age of 18 with a production of Marlowe's Dr Faustus. In 1945 Brook was invited to direct Paul Scofield in King John at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, following this with a celebrated production of Love's Labours Lost (1946) at Stratford-upon-Avon (again with Scofield). Further successes included Anouilh's Ring Round the Moon (1950), Otway's Venice Preserv'd (1953), Hamlet (1955), The Power and the Glory (1956), and The Family Reunion (1956). Brook was made a codirector of the newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962, directing later that year a highly acclaimed production of King Lear (with Scofield once again). Other successes with the RSC included Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade (1964), Seneca's Oedipus (1968), and a famous production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970), featuring an all-white set and the use of circus skills. In 1970 Brook founded, with Jean-Louis Barrault, the International Centre for Theatre Research, a company of international performers with whom he toured extensively. Since 1974 the Centre has been based at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Brook's subsequent productions have included a nine-hour adaptation of the Indian epic The Mahabharata (1985), a pared down version of Carmen (1989), and Qui est la? (1995), a reworking of Hamlet. In 2004 Brook presented Tierno Bokar, a meditation on the life and teachings of the title character, a Sufi mystic in French colonial Africa.
Peter Brook, one of the most respected experimental theater directors of the 20th century, provides the connective link between these two books. On Directing (edited by British theater scholars Giannachi and Luckhurst) is a collection of interviews with 21 mid-career British directors, most of whom are unknown to American audiences. The book tries to pin down the state of stage directing in British theater in the 1990s. Although the directors draw from a variety of doctrines and methods, an overwhelming percentage of them credit Brook (who also wrote the preface) with providing inspiration for their work. Carefully edited by actor and acting teacher Moffitt, Between Two Silences is a transcription of Brook's several days' residency with a group of actors, directors, designers, and students from Southern Methodist University and neighboring theaters. These sessions show Brook at his most familiarÄelegant and thoughtful. But occasionally, his wealth of experience illuminates his ideas in new ways. Recommended for public and academic libraries, especially those with special collections in theater.ÄThomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., MA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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