On Peter Brook andThe Empty Space.
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But resolution and conclusion were never what Brook was looking for.
As you read on, though, the art-mountain started to seem steeper and steeper.
How much could actually be worth his aspirational, exciting, exacting terms holy or rough or immediate?
The barest touch of his intensity was contagious.The Empty Spaceturned us into zealots.
It benefited from a certain grateful intensity from its audience.
I was not the first sniffling pilgrim theyd put there.)
Georges Banu called this stripped-down work the theater of simple forms, of direct communication … of essence.
As much as we wanted him to be our guru, he evaded that obligation.
(I interviewed him when his pared-backA Magic Flutewas about to come to New York.
I dont want anyone to follow me; I dont want to create a tradition, he said.)
For instance, many found his recentBattlefieldpersuasive and beautifulthough the insistent rapture struck me asreductive.
According to his books, though, I was missing the greater part of what he was making.
I wish I could have understood it; now I never will.
So how could he be both guru and not-guru?
But unlike Grotowski, Brook stayed totally engaged with his audiences.
Brook knew it was impossible: We are confronted with paradoxes, he said.
When Brook metEdward Gordon Craigin 1956, he described the ancient visionarys endlessly refillable passion.
In so many ways, Brook was our Gordon Craig.
Like Craig, too, he changed the theater forever everywhere you look you see his influence.
But most of all, he was our priest who tended the flame.
It was indeed all that was needed: A man walked across an empty space.
