The Shifting Point 1946-1987 - Hardcover

Brook, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060390735 ISBN 13: 9780060390730

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1987

Synopsis

The author looks back on his career as a theater director and discusses his stage productions of Shakespeare as well as operas and films

About this title

Reviews

For the ordinary theatergoer, Shakespeare has become a bit of a bore, Brook maintains. Yet the Bard's "cubism of the theater," his curious splicing of verse and prose, ought to resonate with meaning for us today. Here the well-known director explains the rationale behind his controversial productions of King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. This tapestry of essays, notes and manifestos includes a section on the international, multicultural theater group Brook organized in Paris to reinvent the sounds, gestures and scripts that he feels should animate true theater. He relives the group's three-month journey in Africa, which led to his mounting The Conference of the Birds. Another play in which ceremony and performance fuse, Brook's re-creation of the Indian epic Mahabharata, is also discussed. Several pieces on opera explore ways to revive what he considers an artificial, stagnant form. With its far-reaching perspective on avant-garde and classical theater, this journal will reward even readers who are not familiar with the works discussed.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060390735
• ISBN 13: 9780060390730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254