從馬拉/薩德到哈姆雷特：
劇場大師布魯克巡禮
段馨君
Hsin-chun Tuan
Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences
National Chiao Tung University
Peter Brook
Parents from Russia
Born in England in 1925
Got his B.A. from Oxford University
Several periods of various theatrical styles
After WWII, during the 20 years, Brook
made his name in brilliant, but conventional
Shakespeare productions
Brook’s Theater Experiences
From the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre
To the Royal
Shakespeare Company
Was a director of Covent
Garden opera and light
comedy (such as Ring
Around the Moon, Jean
Anouilh)
Established his own
company and theater at
the Bouffes du Nord in
Paris
Creation of his unique
theatrical style
The Mahabharata at the home
The Bouffes du Nord
Influence of Artaud
The Theatre and Its Double
Search for Myth
Staging Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade
Jean-Louis Barrault’s `total theatre’
Grotowski—the “pre-cultural” sources
Barba—the “pre-expressive”
principles
Brook– “the Third Culture of Link”
A pragmatic director
Directed Bizet’s
Carmen
Search for a
mythic theatre
Restore drama
to its primal
`roots’
Rejects
naturalism as a
style with the
Establishment
The Empty Space
Create `the poetic state
A transcendent experience of life’
Through shock effects, cries,
incantation, masks, effigies and ritual
costumes
`arouse sensations of heat and cold’
`all flooding one’s consciousness
simultaneously’
The Empty Space
Brook’s 4 lectures
“The Deadly Theatre”
“The Holy Theatre”
“The Rough Theatre”
“The Immediate Theatre”
Dada and Artaud
`rediscovery of the terror and
awesomeness of the original semireligious theatre’
Demolish the conventional dramatic
values
Particularly `the Stanislavski ethic’
Return to the roots of physical
expression
Body Language
`beyond psychological implication
Beyond monkey-see-monkey-do facsimiles
of social behaviourism’
Avant garde primitivism
E.g. Spurt of Blood
Stylized simplicity and the exploration of
basic theatre language
Dialogue: extreme rapidity and variations of
pitch
Mixture of symbolic gesture and naturalism
The Screens
The Frenzy of the acting
Animalistic vocal effects
Masks and ritualized rhythms
Powerfully Artaudian
Classics of violence
Büchner’s Wozzeck
Strindberg’s A Dream Play
Myth and Ritual
Brook’s search
Productions
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
The Tempest —the
anarchic and primitive
side of human nature
King Lear—Beckettian
and the world `facades
and emblems’
Oedipus
Brook’s productions
Orghast-- `plastic’ sound
The Conference of the Birds
The Ik—theatrical minimalism
The Mahabharata
Return to theatre of myth
Authentic Balinese masks and
puppets
Part I of Orghast in Performance
Performed in front of the tomb of Artaxerxes II
`Prometheus’ was bound to the tomb face on a
ledge near the top
Worries that reciting speeches from Aeschylus’
The Persians might arouse nationalistic anger
Experiments on the improvisation of musical form:
sound
Some of Brook’s Productions:
The Ik, Ubu, The Cherry Orchard
The Mahabharata
Style of Oriental
shadow theatre
Non-western
mythology
between performance
and ceremony
Two Kauravas (from
the original 100)
Five Pandavas
22 actors and 6
musicians
International acting
troupe
Keep certain Kathakali-like
elements
Economy of visual effect and gesture
Symbolic simplicity
The scale and extravagance of the huge story
Includes supernatural beings
Human Level
Brought myth down to
the human level
E.g. Krishna, the god
The elephant-headed
god Ganesha
Men and gods are
interchangeable
Divinity is within each
of us
`The poetical history of
mankind’
The audience
This body literally represents the audience
to listen to the story.
`If you listen carefully, at the end you’ll be
someone else.’
`I have the same blood. I come from the
gods.’
The Mahabharata
`The age of
Destruction’
Forecast of the
disasters
Caused by western
commercialism
In The
Mahabharata
“mankind has to
destroy itself in
order for the
characters to reach
Paradise”(146).
The Mahabharata
Global destruction
At the price of
liberating the spirit
Prepared for The
Mahabharata for
10 years before it
put on the stage
The poet’s control
over his characters
Significance of The Mahabharata
Krishna murmurs in
Arjuna’s ear
The spiritual alternative
turns out to be Indefinable
A valid test case for a
`theatre of myth’
Explore the basis of
theatrical communication
Spectacles: fire
Less is more
Photo: Scene of The Exile
Theatrical Styles
Non-verbal `poetry of the theatre’
Analogous to Barrault’s ideal of `total
theatre’
1950s staging American plays like
Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge
(notorious for including a homosexual
kiss)
Or Tennessee Williams’ incestually
provocative Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Influenced by Artaud’s `Theatre of the
Cruelty’
Antonin Artaud and The
Theatre of Cruelty
Rediscover the primitive ritual function of
theatre
Balinese dance-drama impressed Artaud
The instinctive survival of magic
Reject logic and reason
Develop a ritual language
Rediscover universal physical signs, or
`hieroglyphs’
Verbal expression became incantation
The thematic inversion of good and evil
Antonin Artaud
Primitivism – Ritual – Cruelty – Spectacle
Artaud in many ways our alter ego
He mirrors the disillusion of the 1960s/1970s with
conventional forms of society & religion
Pioneer the experiments with hallucinatory drugs
Associated with fashionable existential
uncertainties
Hailed as the father of modern avant garde theater
Artaud’s work in fact created new forms of
expression
The Theatre and Its Double
If the (traditional) theatre is the double of life, life is
the double of the true theatre. (62)
Material existence is seen as an imperfect copy of
what art – as a higher form of reality – symbolically
expresses. (62)
Theatrical reality is different in kind from ordinary
reality
As with the expressionists or surrealists, this reaction
against naturalism implies a rejection of the
philosophical assumptions of western civilization (65)
The therapeutic aim of liberating the natural man–
instinctive, subconscious, cruel – from perverting
social repressions (94)
Peter Brook:
Searching for Myth
He searches for a
universal theatre
language
Brook became a
convert to the avant
garde at a relatively
late point in his
career
E.g. The
Conference of Birds
Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade
Marat/Sade
1964 cooperated with Royal Shakespeare
Company (RSC)
Brook in the prologue of the book
Marat/Sade indicates:
布萊希特式(Brechtian) 的美感距離
(aesthetic distance) 的運用常被視為是與亞
陶所認為的劇場是直接、暴力的主觀經驗的
觀點相抵觸，我從不認為這是對的。
Weiss: illusion and disappearance co-exist
劇中設計，觀眾如被冰水弄清醒
不全是布萊希特也不是莎士比亞，但卻非常
具有伊莉莎白時期的味道，也像我們所處的
時代
Marat/Sade
Reinterprets Weiss’s play
Employs both Brecht’s “epic theater” &
“Alienation effect” and Artaud’s “Theatre of
Cruelty”
Establish the contemporary lives and
theatrical atmosphere
Achieve the effects of the “total theatre”
Like the Holy theater—therapeutic effects
Performance– techniques of body, sound,
voice, cry, scream, etc.
Express the characters’ physical and
mental pain
Strong sound, images, and dramatic
situations to convey the breathless tension
Stage Design and Visual Effects
in Marat/Sade
Make every inch of the stage space
Visual effects, such as the traps
underneath the floor
Symbolize (1) bathtub (2) container for
killed heads
3 paints: hint of blood colors—the nobles
bleed blue blood, the people bleed read
blood, and the pale revolutionary hero
Marat bleed white blood
Alienation Effect in Marat/Sade
Brook: Marat/Sade does not exist
before Brecht，Peter Weiss used
many layers of “The Alienation Effect” ；
the event of the French Revolution
cannot be taken seriously because in
this play they are played by the mad
persons.
Besides, due to their director is Sade,
their actions are also problematic
Audience and Performers in
Marat/Sade
Audience’s applause–
readjust our own
status
Brook requires his
actors do extreme
and even over
performance
2 performers
expressed their pain
when they play the
roles of Marat and
Charlotte Corday
The Tragedy of Hamlet
Performance style:
Like Jerzy
Grotowski’s the
“Poor Theater”
Simple stage
design--Minimalism
cushions and
Persian carpet at
the Bouffes du Nord
Historical site
Focus on the
performers’ acting
The Tragedy of Hamlet
Qui Est La?– Who Is There?
The very first line of Hamlet
Developed from these fragments to a
condensed version of Hamlet
Main actor: Adrian Lester
Lester also played the part of
Rosalind in As You Like It—versatile,
marvelous
Combination of Theater Theories
According to Carol Rocamora, Brook
explored how the play might have been
approached by a number of noted theater
theorist
Including Stanislavsky, Brecht, Meierhold,
Artaud and Gordon Craig
Not only deconstruction but also
reconfiguration
“Who’s there?” articulated again by Horatio
as the corpses strewn across the stage
slowly rise to their way through
It happens magically, just as Brook intends.
The essentially empty stage
Only a floor covering
With a few brightly colored cushions and a
table or two
Designed by Chloe Obolensky
An exposed, crumbling theater wall
A familiar instrument stand
Toshi Tsuchitori stands off to the side, a
range of primitive instruments at his
fingertips
No props, except a pair of skulls and a
bamboo pole
Bare, spare, elemental
A pure, clear, crystalline new chamber play
Performers in Hamlet
“Pared it down for clarity’s sake”
Says Myers, who doubles deftly as Polonius and
the gravedigger
Hamlet, portrayed by the charismatic young British
actor Adrian Lester
Dressed in black pull-ons and tunic
The lithe, dreadlocked Lester is a supple Hamlet
Dazzling in his range from philosophical to
physical, from petulant to powerful, from witty to
weepy to warrior-like
Lester’s is the rare Hamlet who is, above all, in
control. Of himself and of the play.
Brook’s Transnational Troupe
Brook’s celebrated company of English,
Caribbean, Indian and Asian actors
Underscores the universality of his idea of
“the third culture of Link”
Jeffrey Kissoon, who doubles as a stately
Claudius and Ghost
Natasha Parry as a dignified Gertrude
Shantala Shivalingappa as a delicate
Ophelia
With its multinational cast, its minimal mise
en scène and text
Metatheatrical stylistics—The Ritual of
Hamlet
King Lear
Metaphor: 「戲的星河」
The cruel humanity and the
vanity of life
Represents, after the twice
world wars, the tired
European souls
Choose to interpret by the
way of Becket
Theater of Absurd
In tour performances, they
get emotional feedbacks
and deep understanding in
Europe
bleak black & white visuals
as well as the sometimes
nonsensical editing cues
(those random zooms and
fades to black)
King Lear
Influenced by Jan
Kott’s criticism “King
Lear or Endgame” in
Shakespeare Our
Contemporary
Void, vanity, cruelty,
irrationality, absurd
humanity
corruption of the
present value and the
order
Destruction of the
world
Mechanical stuffs
replace God
Stage Design in King Lear
Simple and bare
stage
Daggling with a big
piece of metal
board
When the tempest
blows, it vibrates
the shirking sound
As if the unstable
world of King Lear
Characters in King Lear
In the interpretation of
the characters
Unlike the traditional
interpretation—Lear in
the center
Regard every role as
an isolate and unique
life
Emphasize and
distinguish their
different
characteristics
Brechtian Style in King Lear
Bertolt Brecht, a famous theater playwright
Invent his theater theory— the “Epic Theater”
Cold and objective
Not be too sentimental toward the mid-ending
Still have a hope
Tours to Paris, Europe, Russia and America
In particular, East Europe and Russia have much responses
to the theme of pain in this production
Conclusion
Peter Brook uses Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” in
directing Marat/Sade to explore body and sound
Marat/Sade and King Lear employ Brecht’s “the
alienation effect”
Brook uses Brecht’s ideas—make audience think
and do action
Brook’s Carmen—Myth Theater: simplistic, fate
The Mahabharata—Brook adapts this Indian epic
to do his intercultural performance
Hamlet—Brook adopts Grotowski’s “the Poor
Theater” to get rid of everything redundant and
focus on the actors
Brook has made his name in theater history
Works Cited
Books and Journal Articles:
Aronson, Arnold. “Brook.” American Avant-garde Theatre: A History. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Brockett, Oscar. The Essential Theatre. 6th Edition. Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
Brockett, Oscar. & Robert J. Ball. The Essential Theatre. 8th Edition. USA: Wadsworth/Thomson, 2004.
Counsell, Colin. “Peter Brook and Ritual Theater.” Signs of Performance. London and New York: Routledge: 1996.
Croyden, Margaret. “A Certain: An Exclusive Conversation with Peter Brook.”
American Theatre. May/June 2001. Vol. 18. Issue 5.
Friedman, Sonya. Trans. Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Original French by H. Meilhac and L. Halevy. New Jersey: Park
Lane Press, 1996.
Hamlet-Metz, Manio. “In Review: Festival Round-up.” Opera News. Nov. 95. Vol. 60. Issue 5.
Inns, Christopher. “Myth and Theatre Laboratories:
Peter Brook.” Avant Garde Theatre. London and New York: Routledge: 1993.
O’ Quinn, Jim. “Editor’s Note.” American Theatre. May/June 2001. Vol. 18 Issue 5.
Parker, Brian. “Ran and the Tragedy of History.” University of Toronto Quarterly. Vol. 55. Num. 4.Summer 1986.
Rocamora, Carol. “A Prince Among Men.” Nation. Vol. 272. Issue 7.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, 1966.
Todd, Andrew and Lecat, Jean-Guy. The Open Circle: Peter Brook’s Theatre Environments. New York: Palgrave,2003.
“Toward a Theatre of Myth: Brook’s Theatre Environment The Mahabharata”
Wolf, Matt. “Year of the Hamlets.” American Theatre. May/June 2001. Vol. 18 Issue 5.
王婉容. 布魯克. 台北：生智，2000.
朱靜美. 意象劇場：非常亞陶，台北：揚智， 1999.
曹小容. 實驗劇場. 台北：揚智，1998.
彭鏡禧. 哈姆雷.台北：聯經，2001.
Multimedia Materials:
Film: Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade
Film: Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen
Film Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata
Film: Peter Brook’s Hamlet
Film: Peter Brook’s King Lear
Online Resources:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%
2Fimages%3Fp%3DPeter%2BBrook%2527s%2BKing%2BLear%26sm%3DYahoo%2521%2BSearch%26fr%3DFPtab-img-t%26toggle%3D1%26cop%3D%26ei%3DUTF8&w=102&h=154&imgurl=www.bardolatry.com%2Fkingle7.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bardolatry.com%2Fkingle
ar.htm&size=5.6kB&name=kingle7.jpg&p=Peter+Brook%27s+King+Lear&type=jpeg&no=2&tt=12&ei=UTF-8
Photos from some of the above books and the website
Thanks
Thanks for your listening.