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‘He Presented Another Path’: Actors and Directors on Peter Brook

Actor Kathryn Hunter heard news of Peter Brook’s death last weekend at 97 o’clock on the phone from his longtime collaborator Marie Helene Estienne. Later, the Olivier Award-winning hunter, who played the witch in Joel Coen’s movie The Tragedy of Macbeth, crossed London for Shakespeare’s Grove.

“I’m playing Lear. Of course, it was Peter’s great play,” she said the other day, saying she was overwhelmed by his loss after working with him for many years, including in New York. “When I was cycling, I felt a big light and I saw most of it. I felt that was Peter’s spirit.”

This kind of mysterious event is a kind of guru in his long world-running career, especially through the nine-hour breakthrough Mahabharata, a 1985 adaptation of the Sanskrit epic. It seems to be suitable for Brooke who has won the position of. Worshiped texts such as his 1968 book of Theatrical Principles, “Empty Space”.

Born in London and based in Paris, Brooke directed nine shows on Broadway. The most famous are the 1965 “Muller / Sad” and the 1971 permanent influential “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. For a new audience at the Brooklyn Music Theater Academy.

Friends and colleagues who worked with him on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and theater makers who have never met him but look reflexively at his beliefs, called this week about Brooke’s influence as an artist and human. That was spoken at. These are edited excerpts from those interviews.

Instead, the actor being cast “”Midsummer nightIn “s Dream,” he made his debut on Broadway by tinkering with Snout.

One day, I got off the subway. I found Peter standing beside me. When the light was a pedestrian light, we set out to cross the road. Peter said, “How are you?” “Actually, Peter, I’m not very happy,” I said. And he died and stopped in the middle of Seventh Avenue, and he turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “What’s that? What’s wrong?” By that time The lights changed and the traffic was barking on Seventh Avenue. He said, “No, no, tell me. I want to know.” I had to hold him in my arm and drag him out of the way. We would both have been knocked down. What I mean is that when he said to me, “What’s that?”, In his eyes, there was no doubt that only I was important at that moment. .. And it impressed me very much.

The director said that Brooke’s vivid first impression of artistry would be revisited every time he performed a classic through “Sky Space” and a film of his work.

I grew up in a rural area in the northern part of Illinois, where corn and soybeans are produced. Then, at the age of 12, he opened the American magazine “Life” in 1966. And there was this expanse of horrifying and gorgeous “Marat / Sade” — a two-page spread of the image of a decapitated aristocrat. Only a few years later, I had a “midsummer night dream” on an American tour. Circus, magic, absolute clarity of text, and joy, reality, and surprise, and again horror, the most amazing experience of a theatrical event is still how to make a play. I think he really changed Shakespeare’s view.

Director about what Brooke left behind.

He really drove us to the present day of how we experience the universe as we sit and collaborate. And the theater is a collaborative format, and the greatest and ultimate collaboration is between the performer and the audience.

The playwright and screenwriter who witnessed Brooke “models his life as an artist” at his base in Paris.

He has consistently done theater workshops and I will find time to do them. I’ve spent the last few years, or 15 years, basically being part of this ad hoc company around the world and there were a lot of people. I always kept it feeling so full. Almost like I retired in the theater. Sometimes I write, sometimes I act, sometimes I just look. Sometimes I played set pieces. And we always shared our meals. Anyway, there was a break so that I could eat as a human being.

Peter will attract the entire room full of people. But the room understood that there was space for everyone here. He showed us that it was a practice: you have to practice making a room for everyone.

Brooke’s actor director as a challenge and inspiration.

Reading “The Empty Space” in college gave me confidence that the theater I wanted to do was legal and important. For me, it was the Bible. I actually went to Paris a few months ago, and I was going to meet him in person for lunch, and he was too ill. But Peter has been alive for a long time. He showed another way.

The former president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music said that BAM turned an old cinema into what is now the Harvey Theater about the magical powder that Brooke sprinkled with the performance of “Mahabharata” in 1987.

When you run an art institution, you need a great artist to work there. And Peter Brook made our reputation. So there were others. But Brooke, Mahabharata, only trapped it. It changed everything in Brooklyn.

Brooke first chased him in the early 1970s, the artistic director of a theater for a new audience, often performed in New York in recent years.

I decided to go to Aspen, Colorado to track where Peter Brook was staying. When I was waiting at Hotel Jerome, he came out. I said, “Mr. Brooke, I wonder if I can audition for you. I have a lot of respect for your work.” He stopped instead of firing me. Looked at me. Then he said, “What did you do?” “Well, I just graduated from drama school, so I don’t have any professional credit.” He just gently shook his head. No. He didn’t say a word. But the group he was with, I came to know some of the actors. They invited me to a rehearsal. So every time they came to New York for years, I went to these rehearsals. And he let me see.

Directed bringing Brooke and his work “Tierno Bokar” to Columbia University and Barnard College in 2005.

One night, Peter was sitting in the aisle on the way. There was a mobile phone student right next to him. The show started and the kids didn’t clean up their cell phones. I encouraged myself as Peter walked down the aisle sitting in the back row and said, “What’s going on with my cell phone?” I didn’t let him gain momentum. Then I went to him and said, “It was good tonight, isn’t it? It’s so beautiful.” And he said, “Yes, the most interesting thing happened. The boy sitting next to me He seemed to be very enthusiastic about the theater and his phone, and it was very interesting to me, “says Peter.

She praised Brooke for giving her the courage to oversee “Kingria” in 2014 at a theater for a new audience.

I was very interested in the play. Who do you think I am? So I was a little paralyzed. I was in Paris for some reason, so I went to his apartment and talked for about 30 minutes. He said: What do you think he is connected to? You can talk to people for hours about those plays, and we didn’t. It was light. He said, “Oh, well, you have to do it. If you don’t do it, there’s no way to find the answer to the question you have.”

The couple, the actors, talk about a long-standing collaboration with Brooke.

Hunter It was slow and time consuming because he wasn’t looking for a product. It was to strip away everything that was essentially blocking you, so that you could really share something very nice and mysterious with your audience. When we leave, work with others, and come back to Peter, I feel like this: I have to be sensitive to myself again.

Our last work, and Peter’s last, was Beckett’s “Happy Days” in French.

Magni Willy appeared and made an unhidden version. Peter wanted to see the relationship between Winny and Willie.

When I’m in the rehearsal room and I feel that there are too many concepts before I start work, I’m having a lot of resistance right now. He allowed us to travel. In failure, accident and collision. But in the end, we would have come up with a story. He was sending us a message: get inside yourself. Is true.

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