At four o'clock in the morning on July 4, the famous director and actor Xu Zheng commented and forwarded such a Weibo: "The master has left." Theatrical legend Peter Brooke died at the age of 97. ”
Peter Brooke, who is it? Some say he is a "genius theatre master" and others call him "the most innovative theatre director of the 20th century."
He is the legendary director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the face of postmodernist theatre, which has only been active in British theatre since the 1960s after the two world wars.
In addition to a series of Shakespearean plays, his directorial masterpieces include Lover's Clothes, The Valley of Wonder and the epic masterpiece Mahabharata.
Stage play "Lover's Clothes"
In addition, he is the author of theatrical and performance theory works "Empty Space" and "Open Doors".
Book "Open Doors" (English edition)
To this day, if you want to ask the directing students of the Chinese opera: How important is Peter Brooke? There will still be many people who will recite to you the most classic quotes from Empty Space:
An actor, walking through an empty stage under the attention of everyone, is already a drama.
The latest Chinese translation of Empty Space
Indeed, this thin book has taught generations of directors, actors, designers, and audiences to meet in a space and gain a richer soul.
Peter Brooke is known as a theater master of postmodernism because in terms of form, he can break the complex stage design, only use the building blocks to form a simple stage, most of the scenes are completed by the performance of the actors and even the interaction with the audience (such as "Lover's Clothes");
Stills from Lover's Clothes
Or taking inspiration from India, thousands of miles away from him, he created a 9-hour Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, and anchored them in the performance with something hard, practical and real—fire, earth, and water;
Stills from Mahabharata
Or the establishment of an international theater research center dedicated to experimenting with avant-garde concepts, taking actors to the top of a mountain in Iran with a kind of no-man "Oak hast"...
But that's not all!
Leaving aside the playfulness of theatrical expression, the freedom of stage narrative, and the nature of the actors' performances, under the precise and vivid aesthetics of the theater, brooks's thinking about some fundamental human propositions is still flowing.
For example, the hidden violence shown in "Lover's Clothes", such as how the musical and rhythmic aspects of the oral language are communicated in "Oakhurst", no matter how large or small, the territory spans Europe, Asia and Africa, Brooke has always been committed to dialogue with the origin of human civilization.
Photo of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, Brooke was invited to serve as the honorary president of the theatre festival
Mr. Lai Shengchuan, a famous theater director, also wrote in the memorial Weibo: "He has always been the most respectable figure in our directorial industry. What we respect is talent, the openness of the heart, the diversity of the work, the depth of the work, and the care for the world and human beings. ”
Director Lai Shengchuan
Brooke concludes Empty Space:
"In the theater, 'if' is the truth. When we are persuaded to believe in this truth, drama and life are one. This is a high goal. Sounds hard. Drama requires a lot of work. But when we experience work as a game, it's no longer work. Drama is a game. ”
If you are not so interested in Brooke or even the drama, you don't have to mind the death of the Slovaks, but the attitude of life conveyed by this wise man who has lived for nearly a century is always worth listening to and experiencing:
If drama and life become one, and drama is a game, then doesn't our "game in the human world" also prove that "there is drama in the human world"?
Today is also a day to live well!
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