Empty Space: Ideas of Theater

In The Empty Space, director Peter Brook outlines his theories on the theater by exploring four different meanings of the word theater - Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate.

Deadly Theatre is the theatre of commerce set up to make money for its producers. It's the theatre of imitation, trying to mimic the box office successes of the past. This affects all aspects, permeates every level. The Directors rely on the old clichés and gimmicks of the past without exploring the texts for their deeper meanings. The Actors do not move past the emotional facades of the roles, playing the surface knee-jerk reactions that they get from text, resulting in stereotypical portrayals. The Audience accepts this Deadly Theatre because they have sought out an honest experience, and rather than accept the disappointment of the less than authentic encounter, they feign excitement and appreciation. Brooks posits that the Audience would rather acquiesce here in order to avoid feeling left out of a cultural loop designed by an elite who have embraced Deadly Theatre. The Critics play the society column game of declaring the big budget shows as overwhelming hits without any true critical analysis. Deadly Theatre is the theatre of repetition.

Holy Theatre is "The Theatre of the Invisible - Made - Visible."

This is what theater and all art making should be addressing- the bringing to light the dark recesses of the human experience; to perform rituals that ask the questions about why we are the way we are; how can we change or accept the less damaged aspects of human nature; what does being in community with others mean.

Religious teaching - including Zen - asserts that this invisible-visible cannot be seen automatically - it can only be seen given certain conditions. Holy art is an aid to this, and so we arrive at at definition of Holy Theatre. A Holy Theatre not only presents the invisible but also offers conditions that make its perceptions possible, according to Brook.

The strengths of a Holy Theatre are also what limit its appeal - the desire to answer the truly personal needs of those who are in the process of creating it. This is not the theatre of mass appeal. Brook explains the processes of three artists who are engaged in the creation of holy theatre - Merce Cunningham, Jerzy Grotowski and Samuel Beckett. All three are well known in their respected disciplines, but have limited visibility in popular culture.

To underscore this, read Brook on the three:

"They each start from their hunger, each works to lessen his own need. And yet the very purity of their resolve, the high and serious nature of their activity inevitably brings a colour to their choices and a limitation to their field. They are unable to be both esoteric and popular at one and the same time."

Rough Theatre could be seen as the antithesis of Holy Theatre by misinterpreting it as anti-intellectual. It is cruder, more popular and doesn’t require any "great study."

Brook again:

"It is always the Popular Theatre that saves the day. Through the ages it has taken many forms, and there is only one factor that they all have in common - A roughness. ...theatre that is not in a theatre, ...on carts, on wagons, on trestles, audiences standing, drinking, ... joining in, answering back."

Or perhaps El Teatro Campesino or Culture Clash. Ultimately, Rough Theater is indeed intelligent in its grasp of social interaction and the community at large, unerring in its ability to lay bare social issues. I would say "Real" is the key word here, rather than "Rough."

In the last chapter, Brook discusses his personal experiences in creating theater. He describes this as Immediate Theatre because theatrical "common reality" exists only in the moment of performance and is lost once the lights go out. It then becomes something different in the minds of each who experienced it. It is this immediacy that draws people to the theater, the liveness, the closeness to reality. Immediacy is the quality that makes theater unique.

ISBN-10: 0684829576
ISBN-13: 978-0684829579