Threads of Time: Recollections - Hardcover

Brook, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 188717835X ISBN 13: 9781887178358

Publisher: Counterpoint, 1998

Synopsis

The great theater and opera director traces his career, from directing Shakespeare's dramas in the Bard's birthplace to London's West End, to his work with Laurence Olivier, Salvador Dali+a7, and other giants, to his own aesthetic and spiritual development. IP.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Brook is a former codirector of the Royal Shakespeare Company and currently heads the International Centre of Theatre Research, which he founded in Paris in 1971.

Reviews

With unflagging verve, Threads of Time presents anecdotes, hilarious or poetic evocations of Brook's childhood, early madcap theater ventures, encounters with eccentric or prophetic characters, and snapshots of travels.... This is far from a showbiz memoir, however. There is no fizz of boasting or gossip....

Stage and film director Brook's soulful, introspective autobiography is as different from the conventional show-biz memoir as his imaginative productions are from traditional commercial theater. Born in 1925, London-raised and Oxford-educated, Brook made his mark in the 1950s and '60s with inventive Shakespeare (a blood-soaked Titus Andronicus, an acrobatic Midsummer Night's Dream) and avant-garde European works (Marat/Sade). He relates also that he was immersed in the mystical teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, and in 1971 founded the International Center for Theater Research, which brought together actors from different traditions and countries in an attempt to make theater reach across cultural boundaries and become truly universal. The productions resulting included The Mahabharata and The Man Who (based on the writings of neurologist Oliver Sacks); Brook's descriptions of how these unusual pieces were collaboratively created are as absorbing as his cogent analyses of earlier working relationships with actors like Paul Scofield and John Gielgud. The director is not an other-worldly metaphysician: he relates his spiritual discoveries very precisely to the insights they gave him about the theater. There is no gossip; his two children are mentioned just once; his wife (actress Natasha Parry) appears primarily as a working companion. Instead of personal chit-chat, Brook offers the chronicle of a committed quest. It leaves a moving impression of a man deeply fulfilled both spiritually and artistically. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Brook, our most tireless explorer of theatrical performance, comes this memoir, a collection of memory fragments arranged in very loose chronological order. Brook explores how theatrical ideas, spiritual impressions, experiences, and people have created the fabric of his art. His performance work has included traditional Western-scripted classics and deeply religious myth from Persia, Africa, and India, while his spiritual study, following Gurdjieff, has been an exploration of the universal in the concrete, the mystical in the practical world. As Brook is also a traveler, some of the most luminous writing here describes Afghanistan, India, New York, Africa, and Paris. Though he has no formal theatrical training, Brook has reformed our ideas about theater through his energy, discipline, curiosity, and openness to a multicultural/multilinguistic program of study. Required reading.?Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., MA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 188717835X
• ISBN 13: 9781887178358
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212