Peter Brook

We have just finished creating a piece of performance based on an extract from 'Birds without Wings' by Louis de Bernieres. This was the culmination of a unit exploring the work of Peter Brook. Oh, if only you'd all been there for all of the time, it would have worked so much better. It's hard to run a movement/stick workshop with three people....

Anyway, we talked a lot about Brook and his ideas about 'illuminating' a text rather than illustrating it. Most of you experieced this style of working when you took part in 'The Golden Masque of Agamemnon' last year. I thought that the following quote from a theatre director about theatre students was interesting:

'Their idol is more often than not Peter Brook, and in this I tend to sympathise with David Hare when he said that Brook "set about draining plays of any specific meaning or context to a point where each became the same play - a universal hippy babbling which represents nothing but fright of commitment."

The director quoted is called Paul Miller and you can check out his blog from the links list (if I work out how to do it). Thanks to Tim Evans, top t.arts teacher from Yokahama , from whom I found the quote. The link to Yokahama's theatre arts blog is also on the links list. Check it out and see what others are doing!

Can you comment on the David Hare quote in the light of your exploration of Brook's work?