Top Peter Brook Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Peter Brook Biography

Peter Stephen Paul Brook, CH, CBE (born 21 March 1925) is an English theatre and film director who has been based in France since the early 1970s. He has won multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia. He has been called "our greatest living theatre director".

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Peter Brook Quotes

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 influences that surround it.

Bears, Born, Influence, Mortal, Theatre

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 and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what's coming to the boil.

Cauldrons, Like, Looks, Restaurant, Restaurants, Things

A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.

Happen, Rules, Space, Stage, Two

The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful.

Looking, Making, Meaning, Meaningful, Rehearsal, Theatre

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 are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

Busy, Hands, Oddities, Properties, Real, Superannuated

Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.

Dogmatic, Dogmatism, Force, Revolution, Tradition

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 of energy in the actor from which true impulses arise.

Desire, Instead, Long, Result, Takes, Thinking

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, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.

Act, Men, Space, Stage, Theatre, Whilst

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.

Call, Empty, Space, Stage, Take

Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.

Confrontation, Drama, Exposure, Leads, Theatre, Understanding

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

Invisible, Music, Possession, Reach, Relaxed

I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you've got a new deck of cards.

Cards, Disclaim, Fields, Meets, Relative, Yesterday

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 natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up. . . At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life. . . The marvel of being one.

Community, Group, Law, Together

Reality' is a word with many meanings.

Meanings, Reality, Word

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 on the stage that transcended their experience in life. They will maintain that Oedipus or Berenice or Hamlet or The Three Sisters performed with beauty and with love fires the spirit and gives them a reminder that daily drabness is not necessarily all.

Berenice, Fire, Giving, Oedipus, Performed, Three

One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.

Miss, Photography, Reality, Special, Views

Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.

Ally, Glowing, Perfect, See, Simplicity

The closeness of reality and the distance of myth, because if there is no distance you aren't amazed, and if there is no closeness you aren't moved.

Amazed, Distance, Moved, Myth, Reality

A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.

Attitude, Doe, Expression, Impulse