Peter Stephen Brook(1925- ) is recognized as the pivot of innovation experimentalism whose style resists the traditional use of Shakespearean performance. Brook's stage productions were influenced by Jan Kott, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett, who l...
Peter Stephen Brook(1925- ) is recognized as the pivot of innovation experimentalism whose style resists the traditional use of Shakespearean performance. Brook's stage productions were influenced by Jan Kott, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett, who led the trend of the Theatre of the Absurd. He omitted and altered Shakespeare‘s text in order to create visual signifiers on stage for what Shakespeare language signifies.
Brook rejected the conventional theatrical theories and representational stage techniques in a way of disproving a notion of orthodox Shakespearean acting. As an alternative to the perceived traditions, he advances his own theory of the empty space, tackling Shakespeare's plays with minimal sets, simple costuming and an ensemble of abstract visual images.
This dissertation is intended to illustrate the heterodoxy of Brook's style applied to his productions of king Lear(1962) , A midsummer Night's Dream(1970), and The Tempest(1968 and 1990 respectively). These productions were designed to show that his eclectic and constant search for new theatrical styles has always been in service of a theatrical experience. They transcend Shakespeare's words, thereby allowing a mystical communication between stage and audience. These four productions are the examples of the Shakespearean theatre that can be all things to the spectators and speak simultaneously to everyone at the moment of being performed. They demonstrate Brook's theory that Shakespeare's plays could actually be performed without compromising the practice of literal illustration.
This dissertation focused on Brood on Brook's idea regarding a Shakespearean theatre as a social practice of creating the immediacy of communal communication. His aspiration to communicate with an inclusive audience leads to his portrayal of timeless human feelings on stage. My choice of Brook's four productions of Shakespeare aims to emphasize his theatrical discovery of human condition that can be shared and experienced in common.