Peter Brook Quotes

#1. 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.

Peter Brook

#2. 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 coal starts and finishes with its combustion, giving us light and heat. And that to me is Shakespeare.

Peter Brook

#3. 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.

Peter Brook

#4. Reality' is a word with many meanings.

Peter Brook

#5. The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

Peter Brook

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

Peter Brook

#7. An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

Peter Brook

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

Peter Brook

#9. 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.

Peter Brook

#10. 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.

Peter Brook

#11. Nothing in theatre has any meaning before or after. Meaning is now.

Peter Brook

#12. There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

Peter Brook

#13. 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.

Peter Brook

#14. 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.

Peter Brook

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

Peter Brook

#16. 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.

Peter Brook

#17. 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 between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore.

Peter Brook