“The theatre is the arena where a living confrontation can take place.”

 

This is Peter Brook

Saner than Artaud

More humble than Brecht

More readable than Stan

...and more alive than all three put together

Here are some places to go...

The first is an excellent record of Brook's groundbreaking production of A Midsummer Night's Dream

http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/exhibition/MND/home.html

The second and third are good extracts of his work.  Read some and see how much sense he makes.

http://www.so-rimlee.com/literature-supernova/2011/4/29/peter-brook-on-deadly-theatre-in-the-empty-space.html

http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotowsm.htm

The last is his seminal book The Empty Space in its entirety in PDFtastic form.

http://preterhuman.net/texts/religion.occult.new_age/occult.conspiracy.and.related/Brook,%20Peter%20-%20The%20Empty%20Space.pdf

 

Post responses

not compulsory; but excellent

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dppfp/Henning_Knows_Best_Politics/

Quality stand up from the German comedy ambassador to the UK.

...and you can tell him you like him here...
http://henningwehn.de/contact.htm

you ain't seen nothin' yet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6RE_KL1eeg

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=tfR68ES3Og8&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL604D45DA1EC8F699

Watch one.

How does it fit with what you have learned of Artaud?

What do you think the desired effect for a spectator is?

What do you think the message is?

Finally

Is it entertainment?

Find out a little about one of the following:

Keith Waterhouse
Jeffrey Bernard
Peter OToole

The Play "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell"

Don't just list writings, awards, achievements.
Try to show you have some understanding and opinion.

the first manifesto

THE PROGRAM: We shall stage, without regard for text:


1. An adaptation of a work from the time of Shakespeare, a work entirely consistent with our present troubled state of mind, whether one of the apocryphal plays of Shakespeare, such as Arden of Feversham, or an entirely different play from the same period.


2. A play of extreme poetic freedom by Leon-Paul Fargue.


3. An extract from the Zohar: The Story of Rabbi Simeon, which has the ever present violence and force of a confla-gration. [Editor's note: The Zohar is a pseudo-epigraphic work, supposedly a mystiecal text written by Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, but scholars have identified the author as thirteenth century Kabbalist, Moses de Leon.


4. The story of Bluebeard reconstructed according to the historical records and with a new idea of eroticism and cruelty.


5. The Fall of Jerusalem, according to the Bible and history; with the blood-red color that trickles from it and the people's feeling of abandon and panic visible even in the light; and on the other hand the metaphysical disputes of the prophets, the frightful intellectual agitation they create and the repercussions of which physically affect the King, the Temple, the People, and Events themselves.


6. A Tale by the Marquis de Sade, in which the eroticism will be transposed, allegorically mounted and figured, to create a violent exteriorization of cruelty, and a dissimulation of the remainder.


7. One or more romantic melodramas in which the im-probability will become an active and concrete element of poetry.


8. Büchner's Wozzek, in a spirit of reaction against our principles and as an example of what can be drawn from a formal text in terms of the stage.


9. Works from the Elizabethan theater stripped of their text and retaining only the accouterments of period, situa-tions, characters, and action.

Who am I?

Who was Antonin Artaud?

Some facts, stories, titles, names, thoughts, opinions, musings and other please.

listen and learn

Listen to one of these BBC radio dramas.
While listening complete some research about the show.
Leave a comment.
Include some research results...
and obviously some thoughts and opinions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cw7kn/HR_Series_3_Gambled/


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cw5nl/Count_Arthur_Strongs_Radio_Show!_Series_7_Arthurish/


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cw5nn/The_Archers_06_03_2012/


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007jpdn/Old_Harrys_Game_Series_2_Episode_5/


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007k23t/Cadfael_Dead_Mans_Ransom_Hostage/


Happy Listening