Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000

Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000

Author: Margaret Croyden

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

Published: 2010-02-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1559366346

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“A fascinating and provocatively stimulating distillation of three decades of intense conversations between one of the twentieth century’s few true theater innovators and America’s leading writer on the theatrical avant-garde. A splendid book.”—Clive Barnes “Peter Brook continues to astonish, not in an ordinary, fashionable way, but in an ancient, insistent way that always forces one inward. There is a true, honest, fearless voice in this fascinating conversation.”—Ken Burns Peter Brook, one of the most important contemporary theatrical directors in the West, shares his most insightful thoughts and deepest feelings about theater with Margaret Croyden, who has followed his career for thirty years, gaining an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of his work. In these interchanges from 1970 to 2000, Brook freely discusses major works such as his landmark airborne A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his untraditional interpretation of the opera La Tragédie de Carmen. He also covers the establishment of the Paris Center, his work in the Middle East and Africa, and his masterwork, the nine-hour production of The Mahabharata, which has virtually reinvented the way actors and directors think about theater. Margaret Croyden is a well-known critic, commentator, and journalist, whose articles on theater and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Village Voice, American Theatre, and Antioch Review, among others. She is the author of Lunatics, Lovers and Poets, a seminal book on the development of nonliterary theater.


The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare

The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare

Author: John Russell Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-06-02

Total Pages: 603

ISBN-13: 1134146485

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare is a major collaborative book about plays in performance. Thirty authoritative accounts describe in illuminating detail how some of theatre’s most talented directors have brought Shakespeare’s texts to the stage. Each chapter has a revealing story to tell as it explores a new and revitalising approach to the most familiar works in the English language. A must-have work of reference for students of both Shakespeare and theatre, this book presents some of the most acclaimed productions of the last hundred years in a variety of cultural and political contexts. Each entry describes a director’s own theatrical vision, and methods of rehearsal and production. These studies chart the extraordinary feats of interpretation and innovation that have given Shakespeare’s plays enduring life in the theatre. Notable entries include: Ingmar Bergman * Peter Brook * Declan Donnellan * Tyrone Guthrie * Peter Hall * Fritz Kortner * Robert Lepage * Joan Littlewood * Ninagawa Yukio * Joseph Papp * Roger Planchon * Max Reinhardt * Giorgio Strehler * Deborah Warner * Orson Welles * Franco Zeffirelli


Peter Brook

Peter Brook

Author: Michael Kustow

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1466879750

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Peter Brook is one of the world's legendary theater directors. His productions are a byword for imagination, energy, and innovation. From his ground-breaking production of Marat/Sade, to his "white box" A Midsummer Night's Dream, to his monumental staging of The Mahabharata and beyond, Brook has always been the pioneer of what a director and a company of actors can conjure out of an empty stage. In this first authoritative biography, arising out of an association and friendship with Brook over forty years, Michael Kustow tells the fascinating and revealing story of a man whose life has been a never-ending quest. Born into a Russian émigré family in London, Brook has been fascinated by theater and film since childhood. He studied at Oxford, where he made a film of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and was almost sent down during his turbulent undergraduate years. As a brilliant young man influenced by the theatrical visionary Gordon Craig, he turned his hand to Shakespeare, opera, new French drama, and mainstream comedy. Following Craig's philosophy, Brook began to search for a simplicity, harmony, and beauty that would incorporate all aspects of the stage production under the control of one person. He also began the lifelong search for authenticity on the stage, a search that led him around the world from London to New York, to his legendary Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, to Broadway and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was in Paris, in the 1970s, that he attempted to discover a universal language of theater with an international group of actors. This collaboration resulted in a series of visually spectacular and innovative shows including The Ik, The Conference of the Birds, and The Mahabharata. In his long and influential career, he worked with some of the world's greatest actors and writers including Glenda Jackson, Paul Scofield, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Irene Worth, Jeanne Moreau, Peter Weiss, and Truman Capote. His films, such as Lord of the Flies, Moderato Cantabile, King Lear (with Paul Scofield), The Beggar's Opera, and the film of Marat/Sade moved the camera and the screen to borders they had not reached before. His book The Empty Space continues to be one of the classic works on theater and drama in the Western canon and his memoir, Threads of Time, gave us a glimpse into his personal development. In this biography, based on extensive interviews with Peter Brook and many of the actors, writers, producers, and directors he's worked with throughout his life, Michael Kustow goes to the heart of Brook's theater, his self-searching and his unceasing desire to produce work that redefines theater and life.


Brook, Hall, Ninagawa, Lepage

Brook, Hall, Ninagawa, Lepage

Author: Peter Holland

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-10-24

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1472539516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa and Robert Lepage to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.


Great Shakespeareans Set IV

Great Shakespeareans Set IV

Author: Adrian Poole

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 1168

ISBN-13: 1441145281

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.


The Twentieth Century Performance Reader

The Twentieth Century Performance Reader

Author: Teresa Brayshaw

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1136449132

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from: Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola. Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.


Play Directing

Play Directing

Author: Francis Hodge

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1317351029

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Play Directing describes the various roles a director plays, from selection and analysis of the play, to working with actors and designers to bring the production to life. The authors emphasize that the role of the director as an artist-leader collaborating with actors and designers who look to the director for partnership in achieving their fullest, most creative expressions. The text emphasizes how the study of directing provides an intensive look at the structure of plays and acting, and of the process of design of scenery, costume, lighting, and sound that together make a produced play.


Chora 7

Chora 7

Author: Alberto Pérez-Gómez

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2016-02-01

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0773598790

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For over twenty years, the Chora series has received international acclaim for its excellence in interdisciplinary research on architecture. The seven volumes of Chora have challenged readers to consider alternatives to conventional aesthetic and technological concepts. The seventy-eight authors and eighty-seven scholarly essays in the series have investigated profound cultural roots of architecture and revealed rich possibilities for architecture and its related disciplines. Chora 7, the final volume in the series, includes fifteen essays on architectural topics from around the world (France, Greece, Iran, Italy, Korea, and the United States) and from diverse cultures (antiquity, Renaissance Italy, early modern France, and the past hundred years). Thematically, they bring original approaches to human experience, theatre, architectural creation, and historical origins. Readers will also gain insights into theoretical and practical work by architects and artists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Peter Brook, Douglas Darden, Filarete, Andy Goldsworthy, Anselm Kiefer, Frederick Kiesler, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, and Peter Zumthor. Contributors to Chora 7 include Anne Bordeleau (University of Waterloo), Diana Cheng (Montreal), Negin Djavaherian (Montreal), Paul Emmons (Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech), Paul Holmquist (McGill University), Ron Jelaco (McGill University), Yoonchun Jung (Kyoto University), Christos Kakalis (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture), Lisa Landrum (University of Manitoba), Robert Nelson (Monash University), Marc J Neveu (Woodbury University), Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University), Angeliki Sioli (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education), Nikolaos-Ion Terzoglou (National Technical University of Athens), and Stephen Wischer (North Dakota State University).


The Shakespeare Wars

The Shakespeare Wars

Author: Ron Rosenbaum

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-11-09

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 0307807924

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“[Ron Rosenbaum] is one of the most original journalists and writers of our time.” –David Remnick In The Shakespeare Wars, Ron Rosenbaum gives readers an unforgettable way of rethinking the greatest works of the human imagination. As he did in his groundbreaking Explaining Hitler, he shakes up much that we thought we understood about a vital subject and renews our sense of excitement and urgency. He gives us a Shakespeare book like no other. Rather than raking over worn-out fragments of biography, Rosenbaum focuses on cutting-edge controversies about the true source of Shakespeare’s enchantment and illumination–the astonishing language itself. How best to unlock the secrets of its spell? With quicksilver wit and provocative insight, Rosenbaum takes readers into the midst of fierce battles among the most brilliant Shakespearean scholars and directors over just how to delve deeper into the Shakespearean experience–deeper into the mind of Shakespeare. Was Shakespeare the one-draft wonder of Shakespeare in Love? Or was he rather–as an embattled faction of textual scholars now argues–a different kind of writer entirely: a conscientious reviser of his greatest plays? Must we then revise our way of reading, staging, and interpreting such works as Hamlet and King Lear? Rosenbaum pursues key partisans in these debates from the high tables of Oxford to a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in a strip mall in the Deep South. He makes ostensibly arcane textual scholarship intensely seductive–and sometimes even explicitly sexual. At an academic “Pleasure Seminar” in Bermuda, for instance, he examines one scholar’s quest to find an orgasm in Romeo and Juliet. Rosenbaum shows us great directors as Shakespearean scholars in their own right: We hear Peter Brook–perhaps the most influential Shakespearean director of the past century–disclose his quest for a “secret play” hidden within the Bard’s comedies and dramas. We listen to Sir Peter Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, as he launches into an impassioned, table-pounding fury while discussing how the means of unleashing the full intensity of Shakespeare’s language has been lost–and how to restore it. Rosenbaum’s hilarious inside account of “the Great Shakespeare ‘Funeral Elegy’ Fiasco,” a man-versus-computer clash, illustrates the iconic struggle to define what is and isn’t “Shakespearean.” And he demonstrates the way Shakespearean scholars such as Harold Bloom can become great Shakespearean characters in their own right. The Shakespeare Wars offers a thrilling opportunity to engage with Shakespeare’s work at its deepest levels. Like Explaining Hitler, this book is destined to revolutionize the way we think about one of the overwhelming obsessions of our time.


Shakespeare and Directing in Practice

Shakespeare and Directing in Practice

Author: Kevin Ewert

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-05-11

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 135031689X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When directors approach Shakespeare, is the play always the thing – or might something else sometimes be the thing? How can directing produce fresh contexts for Shakespeare's work? Part of the innovative series Shakespeare in Practice this book introduces students to current practices of directing Shakespeare. Ewert explores how the conventions and creative tropes of today's theatre make meaning in Shakespeare production now. The 'In Theory' section starts with an analysis of theatre production and directing more generally before looking at the specific Shakespeare context. The 'In Practice' section offers a wonderful range of production examples that showcase the wide breadth of approaches to directing Shakespeare today, from the 'conventional' to the most experimental. Providing a useful general overview of directing Shakespeare on stage today, this is an ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying 'Shakespeare in Performance' in Literature, Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies departments. This book will also inspire students studying directing as part of a theatre programme, and scholars, performers and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.