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

by Peter Brook (Author) "I CAN take any empty space and call it a bare stage..." (more)
Key Phrases: deadly theatre, holy theatre, rough theatre, New York, King Lear, Merce Cunningham (more...)

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

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684829576
• ISBN-13: 978-0684829579
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,041 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 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)

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."

14 of 16 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

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.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opening the mind, October 21, 2000

By	James Allard "Constant Reader" (Mishawaka, IN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Have you ever noticed that several of the worlds truly Great Books are very short? Reading this book, along with The Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmond Jones, Acting: the first 6 lessons by Boleshavsky and Aristotles Poetics are (to my less than humble opinion) all one really needs to have a degree in Theater/re.