Peter Brook Quotes

• A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.

  Peter Brook

  Two, Space, Stage

  162 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Men, Space, Theatre

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

  184 Copy quote

• Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.

  Peter Brook

  Drama, Understanding, Theatre

  160 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Character, Air, Opposites

  Peter Brook (2017). “The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration, 1946-87”, p.16, Bloomsbury Publishing

  148 Copy quote

• Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.

  Peter Brook

  Theatre

  "Does Nothing Come from Nothing?". Ernest Jones Lecture at The Edward Lewis Theatre, London, ciret-transdisciplinarity.org. June 13, 1994.

  93 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Law, Community, Theatre

  129 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Thinking, Long, Desire

  Peter Brook (2017). “Peter Brook: Threads Of Time: A Memoir”, p.64, Bloomsbury Publishing

  131 Copy quote

• The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.

  Peter Brook

  Meaningful, Theatre, Rehearsal

  118 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Past, Light, Giving

  113 Copy quote

• The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

  Peter Brook

  Simple, Two, Directors

  "On Directing: Interviews with Directors". Book editing by Gabriella Giannachi, Foreword, 1999.

  101 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Attitude, Expression, Doe

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

  84 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Distance, Reality, Myth

  81 Copy quote

• I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.

  Peter Brook

  Space, Empty, Stage

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

  50 Copy quote

• Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.

  Peter Brook

  Glowing, Perfect, Simplicity

  54 Copy quote

• In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the influences that surround it.

  Peter Brook

  Theatre, Bears, Influence

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

  65 Copy quote

• We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

  Peter Brook

  Music, Invisible, Possession

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

  43 Copy quote

• Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

  Peter Brook

  Real, Oddities, Hands

  66 Copy quote

• I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you've got a new deck of cards.

  Peter Brook

  Yesterday, Cards, Fields

  54 Copy quote

• Reality' is a word with many meanings.

  Peter Brook

  Reality

  Peter Brook (1996). “The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

  32 Copy quote

• Many audiences all over the world will answer positively from their own experience that they have seen the face of the invisible through an experience on the stage that transcended their experience in life. They will maintain that Oedipus or Berenice or Hamlet or The Three Sisters performed with beauty and with love fires the spirit and gives them a reminder that daily drabness is not necessarily all.

  Peter Brook

  Fire, Oedipus, Giving

  65 Copy quote

• Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.

  Peter Brook

  Revolution, Tradition, Dogmatism

  22 Copy quote

• There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

  Peter Brook

  People, Prophet, Guides

  32 Copy quote

• I've always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you've got lots and lots of things laid out and you go and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what's coming to the boil.

  Peter Brook

  Looks, Cauldrons, Restaurants

  86 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peter Brook

  Responsibility, Lost, Persons

  "A Guilt-Ridden Winner Takes Center Stage In Peter Brook's 'Battlefield'". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. October 8, 2016.

  13 Copy quote

• One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.

  Peter Brook

  Photography, Reality, Views

  6 Copy quote

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