The delimitation of culture: Brook’s model

Summary

In the well-known book The Empty Space, Peter Brook carried out his familiar division into Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate theaters. The Holy theater was an expression of the dream, frequent in the 1960s and 1970s, of the rebirth of authentic links between the modern stage and ritual and myth. In the footsteps of Artaud, there was a proposal at the time that the Invisible should again become the Visible, that the Eternal would find expression in rhythms, forms, and gestures, that the stage would meet all the criteria of the locus sacer, and time would take on the ritual dimension of sameness, presentation, and presence.

In much of his mature theatrical activity, Brook appeals directly to myth and ritual—in the whole cycle of well-known productions, after leaving the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Orghast (1971), The Iks (1975); and Conference of the Birds (1976). Sometimes he plucked fabular material out of mythical stories, or resorted to the fruitful theatricality of patterns of religious activity. Elsewhere he gave proof of his faith in the supremacy of the ideas of co-participation and community. The most famous manifestation of this attitude was of course his Mahabharata. Brook produced several versions of the Mahabharata with different lineups of actors: the French-language version had its premiere as part of the Avignon Festival on July 7, 1985; the English-language version was shown for the first time in Zurich in August 1987, and finally the film version was produced in 1990.

This legendary production has repeatedly been described as the logical crowning of Brook's many years of creative process, in search of what he called “interior culture.” But it was also a personal illustration of the “intercultural” principles he adopted, a practical lesson in the theses of the anthropology of the theater which were obligatory in the work of the International Centre for Theatrical Research (Centre International de Recherche Théâtrale) that Brook directed in Paris from 1971 on.

In the Mahabharata, Peter Brook utilized the experience of the Paris Centre—conceived of as a place for the meeting of many cultures—but also his research trips with an international group of actors to Iran, Africa, the USA, and India. This led to the gathering of what would seem to be a wealth of incompatible experience.