Peter Brook Quotes

24 quotes in 448 categories

• A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.
• There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.
• A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which…
• In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the…
• I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him,…
• The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.
• Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.
• 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…
• Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.
• 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…
• 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…
• The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.
• It takes a long while for a director to cease thinking in terms of the result he desires and instead concentrate on discovering the source…
• Shakespeare doesn't belong to the past. If his material is valid, it is valid now. It's like coal. The only meaningfulness of a piece of…
• An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?
• 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…
• We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then…
• I've always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you've got lots and lots of things laid out and you go…
• I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage,
• Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

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