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Peter Brook

Peter Brook Biography

Theatre Director

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“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.”

HumansMomentsShowsRealityViewsSpecialMissingPersonalityEssentialsComputerPhotographyInstinctPhotographerAidsInvisibleCapturePantsSensibilityClicksRegisterAnatomyHindranceShuttersSpecial MomentsZen Like
Author:Peter Brook
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“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.”

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Author:Peter Brook
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“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.”

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Author:Peter Brook
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“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.”

IdeasCharacterActorsAirBuildingOne DayOppositesTheatreMusclesPreparingBricksInhibitions
Book:The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration, 1946-87
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“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?”

RealWholeHandsActorsAsksOur LivesSpecialStageMachinesSeasonsFunctionStructurePropertyCriticsBusyTheatreCustomsSurvivingMonumentQuaintOdditiesAnachronismTheatre Actors
Author:Peter Brook
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