'I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.'Peter Brook's seminal book, an acknowledged classic of theatre writing, sets out many of the ideas about theatre which informed his lifelong work as a theatre director, from his iconic 'white box' production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and his ground-breaking adaptation of The Mahabharata, to his work at the International Centre for Theatre Research.Available as an ebook for the first time sin...

"First there was the master conjurer adept at musicals, farces, opera and Shakespeare. Then there was the philosopher-king ... who has devoted his energies to a quest for a theatre that was simple in form and rich in meaning." - Michael BillingtonThe theatre's greatest contemporary director tells the story of his life.Peter Brook was the modern stage's greatest inventor. For over 50 years he held audiences spellbound with his critically acclaimed productions. This ...

Somewhere in the world, a man sits alone outside a prison. Who is he, and why is he there? Is it a choice, or a punishment?With The Prisoner, the internationally renowned theatre director Peter Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne ask provocative and profound questions about justice, guilt, redemption – and what it means to be free.The Prisoner opened at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, in March 2018, before an international tour w...

'Destruction never approaches weapon in hand. It comes slyly, on tiptoe, making you see bad in good and good in bad.'The devastation of war is tearing the Bharata family apart. The new king must unravel a mystery: how can he live with himself in the face of the devastation and massacres that he has caused.In Battlefield, the internationally renowned team of Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne and Jean-Claude Carrière revisit the great Indian epic The Ma...

A thoughtful and deeply personal book by a master theatre-maker.In Tip of the Tongue, Peter Brook takes a charming, playful and wise look at topics such as the subtle, telling differences between French and English, and the many levels on which we can appreciate the works of Shakespeare. Brook also revisits his seminal concept of the 'empty space', considering how theatre – and the world – have changed over the span of his long and distinguished career.Threaded thr...

Hailed as "the theatrical event of this century" (Sunday Times), Peter Brook's unique dramatisation of India's great epic poem, The Mahabharata played to ecstatic audiences worldwide. In The Shifting Point, his first book since The Empty Space, Brook assesses the lessons of his pioneering work from his brilliant debut at Stratford and the West End in the 1960s to the triumphant success of The Mahabharata. With the bravura and insight of a great practitioner and explorer he reveals some of ...

'Listen!'In this collection of new essays, the world-renowned director Peter Brook offers unique and personal insights into sound and music – from the surprising impact of Broadway musicals on his famous Midsummer Night's Dream, to the allure of applause, and on to the ultimate empty space: silence.It is studded throughout with episodes from the author's own life and career in opera, theatre and film – including working on many of his most notable producti...

"Peter Brook is not only one of the truly outstanding directors of our time, he is also, undoubtedly, the only one whose skill as a writer equals his genius as a practitioner of the theatre." - Martin EsslinA new work from Peter Brook - the contemporary theatre's greatest inventor.Whatever the social and national barriers, we all have a brain and we think we know it. But, the moment we go inside, we find we are on another planet.Using Oliver Sacks' neurolog...

In this spiritual sequel to his influential Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks examines the dangerously alluring power of storytelling.“There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can defeat it.” So begins the scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks’s reckoning with today’s flourishing cult of story.Forty years after publishing his seminal work Reading for the Plot, his important contribution...

Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way.Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters ...

Peter Brook was the most consistently innovative director in Western theatre. In these three essays he returns to the concept of his first book The Empty Space and examines what that means for the life of a production. How can a company establish its own "empty space" - a rehearsal and performance environment which will encourage the actors to abandon the security of the hackneyed and release their true creativity?The potency of Brook's writing lies in his ability invest ge...

In this enthralling re-creation of American novelist Henry James' famous ten-month trip around the United States, lauded critic Peter Brooks brings to life both the literary giant and America in its Gilded Age.In 1904, after two decades of living and travelling abroad, Henry James returned to the United States to discover a world drastically different from the one he had left behind. Suddenly, the future of the world seemed to be in his native land, which he had on...