The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate [Paperback]

Peter Brook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1995

First published in 1968, The Empty Space is a timeless analysis of theatre, from perhaps the most influential director of the twentieth century. In The Empty Space, groundbreaking director Peter Brook draws on a life in love with the stage to explore the issues facing any theatrical performance. Here he describes important developments in theatre from the last century, as well as smaller scale events, from productions by Stanislavsky to the rise of Method Acting, from Brecht’s revolutionary alienation technique to the free form happenings of the 1960s, and from the different styles of such great Shakespearean actors as John Gielgud and Paul Scofield to a joyous impromptu performance in the burnt-out shell of the Hamburg Opera just after the war. Passionate, unconventional, and fascinating, his book shows how theatre defies rules, builds and shatters illusions, and creates lasting memories for its audiences.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Peter Brook's career, beginning in the 1940s with radical productions of Shakespeare with a modern experimental sensibility and continuing to his recent work in the worlds of opera and epic theater, makes him perhaps the most influential director of the 20th century. Cofounder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and director of the International Center for Theater Research in Paris, perhaps Brook's greatest legacy will be The Empty Space. His 1968 book divides the theatrical landscape, as Brook saw it, into four different types: the Deadly Theater (the conventional theater, formulaic and unsatisfying), the Holy Theater (which seeks to rediscover ritual and drama's spiritual dimension, best expressed by the writings of Artaud and the work of director Jerzy Grotowski), the Rough Theater (a theater of the people, against pretension and full of noise and action, best typified by the Elizabethan theater), and the Immediate Theater, which Brook identifies his own career with, an attempt to discover a fluid and ever-changing style that emphasizes the joy of the theatrical experience. What differentiates Brook's writing from so many other theatrical gurus is its extraordinary clarity. His gentle illumination of the four types of theater is conversational, even chatty, and though passionately felt, it's entirely lacking in the sort of didactic bombast that flaws many similar texts. --John Longenbaugh

About the Author

Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH CBE (born 21 March 1925) is a highly influential British theatrical producer and director. During the 1950s he worked on many productions in Britain, Europe, and the USA, and in 1962 returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to join the newly established Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Throughout the next the 1960's he directed many ground breaking productions for the RSC before in 1970 forming The International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684829576
• ISBN-13: 978-0684829579
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Theater
  • #90 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The theatre as a living organism, June 11, 2001

By 

J. Remington "John Remington" (Adams, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (Paperback)

Building upon the earlier work of Aristotle, Brecht, Artaud and others, Brook confronts the living organism of the theatre on four levels: Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate. In each level, Brook makes the case that the theatre is not only a necessary component to the human creature, but a being that despite its constant wounds and ills, manages to bounce up from the death bed and find a way to survive.

Interestingly when Brook was writing (1968) there were many cynical critics who complained that the theatre was dying in the wake of television and film. Brook confronts the issue that theatre attendance was reacing all time lows. Today, over thirty years later, it is daunting to consider that there are even more distractions (the internet, home video, etc.) and attendance is even lower still. Yet despite these imposing knives thrusting into the communal body that is the Theatre, the world's oldest art form manages to forge ahead, survive and, the rare cases, thrive all the while maintaining its cultural importance.

Brook believes the theatre is unique is that it requires a community of artists and audiences alike to exist. That very sense of humanity and awe is what allows it to flourish in many instances.

Brook's writing is admittedly erudite and sometimes pretentious. And perhaps when one takes the positions that he does, such lofty language and posings may indeed be impossible. I hate to say it, but Brook's book may be hard going for the theatre lay person- God knows I'm aware of how elitist that sounds, but I think it is true. Because of his thick verbage, it may take a couple of stabs for the reader to unlock Brook's fevered soapboxing. But the journey is well worth the price.

This is a book of theatre theory and therefore it may appear quite barren of practical solutions. However when read in conjunction with not only life experience in the theatre as well as the many great acting, directing and play wrighting texts, it does provide the theatre artist with the basis for forging a true political manifesto. To quote Brook himself, "To play needs much work. But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more. A play is a play."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Important, December 1, 2002

By 

"psyges" (Indiana, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (Paperback)

Yes: Brook is a genius.
Yes: This work is of great value to any theatre artist.
BUT!!! This book is rather dense, and those who are unfamiliar with major movements and theories in the last century of theater may find themselves a bit lost when Brook begins to talk about Artaud and the "Holy Theater" or Brecht and "Rough Theater."

Brook's ideas, through his sometimes dense writing, are meant to inspire and invigorate. This is not a manual or even a reference to create good theatre, as a major argument of Brook's is that good theater is far to complex and ever-changing to be explained by any book/manual/dogma/etc.

Read this book and know that it will not help you to create good theatre- if anything, it will raise the bar for "good" theatre so much higher that one's task becomes infinitely more difficult. This is the agony and the ecstasy of reading Peter Brook.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brook's Genius, January 10, 2007

By 

J. L. Wright "digitalzen" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (Paperback)

What is great about the empty space is that Peter Brook's theory is relevant to all art forms. The four theatres he describes are basically categories in which all art falls into. This seems odd at first until you see what he is describing. What turns most people off is the idea of over-categorizing art. But Brook's theatres tend to be more or less critiques of individual performances, or what the effect of that performance is on the audience. This is also easy to read. Too much theatre philosophy gets bogged down by either melodramatic thespian writers, or rambling philosophies from those who have not trained themselves to ge good writers. With Brook, it is pretty straightforawrd, not always easy to understand mind you, but straightforward. If you are at all interested in the arts then this is a must read.